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Young Defenders Office, Meritas City - September 18th, 2014, 14:15PM

The ‘standard assessment uniform’ was… basic. Inside the box was a two-piece costume, coloured jet-black with a few white accents across the waist, thighs, and shoulders. I couldn’t tell you what material it was made of - something weirdly plastic and light - but it was clingy; too clingy. 

The other kids’ uniforms had different accented colours; one of the other girls had red while one of the boys had a dark green, so I wasn’t sure if it was designed to match my power aesthetically, as well as physically.

It had been shaped pretty much perfectly, which was somehow worse; really wasn’t a fan of just how skintight it was.

Seeing some of the others had a jacket or hoodie over their uniforms, I threw my blue jacket over it. Better to cover up.

I stepped back out, dropping into one of the chairs that had been set up where other kids were sitting. Counting me, there were eight of us total. I sat down in a chair away from the others, looking ahead, trying to centre myself and keep my nerves in check. 

Before long, I felt someone sidle up next to me.

“You doin’ ok?” I heard a girl say. 

It took me a second to turn and look at her. She was short, barely an inch over five feet. Squat, with a stockier build, tan skin and dark brown hair. Like me, she was wearing the uniform, though hers had orange accents.

The thing that stood out to me the most was her eyes; where any other person’s eyes were white, hers were a bright orange.

“Y-yes, hi. Sorry, I’m S-” I hesitated for a second. Did I use my real name or my ‘hero name’? “Skullgirl.”

She looked up at me, a gleam in her eye. “Skullgirl? That’s cool as hell!” She said, sounding genuinely impressed. “Call me Spitter.” She said, holding out a hand to shake.

“Good to meet you, ‘S-Spitter’.” I said, shaking her hand. I could feel the nerves I’d had for the last hour or so relaxing, ever so slightly.

“So, how you feelin’? Nervous?” She asked.

“L-little bit, yeah.” I said, wincing. My stammer probably gave away just how nervous I was.

Spitter leaned back in her seat, arms behind her. “Me too. Gonna be honest, kinda shittin’ it.”

I blinked, looking at her. “You don’t- you don’t seem nervous.”

She laughed, almost like a bark. “Don’t I? I feel it, like I’m about to pop any second.” She sat back up, smiling as she looked at me. “Maybe it’s nerves, maybe it’s excitement. I dunno, being a superhero just sounds great, y’know?”

I looked down. “Y-yeah, absolutely. You see all the heroes doing what they do and you don’t think you’re gonna get powers and become a superhero.”

I see Spitter looking at me as I talk, seemingly genuinely interested in what I have to say.

“And I just- I don’t know, I’ve always wanted to do something that makes other people happy, I guess.”

“That’s cute.” Spitter replied, grinning.

My train of thought was cut off by Mr. House clearing his throat in the middle of the room. He stood holding a clipboard, looking over at us. As his eyes scanned the room, the others slowly quieted down.

“Right,” he started, exhaling, “Let me be the first to congratulate you on your progression to the next step of the Young Defenders tryouts.”

The way he was talking sounded….flat, almost scripted. Like he was reading from a prompter. That, or he’d said it enough times that it was second nature at this point.

“The next step is known as the Action Assessment, which will be a simulated exercise taking place in one of our Action Rooms. For those not aware, our Action Rooms are designed to simulate realistic and lifelike scenarios to test you and your mettle.”

He looked up at the room, his expression hard.

“The simulations are lifelike. Very lifelike. So be warned, you may very well get too immersed into the simulation. Just try to keep a clear head.”

I looked around at the other candidates; all of them were quiet, though a couple looked more like they were staring at Mr. House rather than actually listening.

“For this assessment, you’ll be split into teams. The purpose of this exercise is to test you and assess you on fundamental aspects of what we believe will make a true Young Defender: Combat aptitude, teamwork, rescuing civilians, and the ability to prioritise and improvise on the fly.”

The idea of combat seemed to get people’s attention.

“After that, the assessment will be considered over. You’ll all be graded based on those aspects, and will be contacted regarding the next step.”

He tossed the clipboard to the side, where it landed with a loud clattering thunk.

“You’ll now be assigned your teammates. There’s eight of you here, so two teams of four sounds fair.”

He coughed.

“Team A will consist of: Thread, Bunker-Buster…” he audibly sighed. “Weedmaster.”

He stared stone-faced at a kid who high-fived a girl next to him.

“And Swarmkeeper.” Mr. House finished.

Immediately, the room broke into noise, as people began realising who they were teamed with.

“Team B will consist of: Leeroy, Sweep, Skullgirl, and Spitter.”

I felt myself freeze as I heard my name, my heart skipping a beat. This now suddenly felt very real.

“Hell yeah, we’re together!” Spitter said next to me. She seemed much more excited for this than I felt.

Mr. House spoke up again as people talked. “Team A, please make your way to Action Room A, Team B to Action Room B. You’ll be given 10 minutes once the doors close to introduce yourselves to each other and strategise.”

I couldn’t move. It was like my entire body had locked up on me. For whatever reason, this was scaring me; the whole idea of strategising, letting people down, feeling worthle-

My train of thought came crashing to a halt as Spitter tapped me on the shoulder.

“Come on, Skullgirl,” she said, smirking. “Let’s go meet our teammates.”

It took me longer than I wanted to admit to actually walk to Room B. Not because I got lost or anything - it was basically a straight line - but because I was terrified.

I’d stayed about two steps behind Spitter as we approached the door, with two other candidates: one was almost the same height as me, lean and built like a runner, his costume with green accents. His hair fell just past his shoulders, a dark blonde colour, but seemed to be faintly drifting in the wind despite the room being completely enclosed.

Behind him was easily the youngest person in our group: he couldn’t have been more than about twelve or thirteen, his costume marked with purple accents. He was probably an inch or so taller than Elena, thin with messy black hair. He didn’t look nervous at all, in fact he was moving so much that he looked like he was about to explode.

As we stepped into the door, we found ourselves in what looked to be a small break room: a neat dark table in the middle of a room with cream-coloured walls, four chairs surrounding it.

The youngest one darted to the closest chair before landing on it with a thunk.

“Ladies first.” The other boy said to me and Elena, smiling.

“Cheers, dude.” Elena said, slapping him gently on the side.

“T-thanks.” I mumbled, sitting on one of the chairs.

An awkward silence hung in the air 

“Well.” The boy with the shoulder-length hair said, finally breaking the silence. “Pleasure to meet all of you, hope we all do well. I think introductions are in order. You can call me ‘Sweep’.”

The way he spoke, he sounded like he was English. Upper-class, too. He was clearly trying to project a good image, but he sounded posh. Too posh.

“Sweep?” Spitter asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes, Sweep.” Sweep responded, nodding. “My power is officially listed as ‘Aerokinetic Control’, but I just like to say I can control the wind.”

That explained why his hair moved the way it did. 

He gestured to Spitter. “You?”

Spitter smirked, turning to look at each of us. “‘Sup, name’s Spitter. I don’t remember the ‘official’ name for my power but I can hawk up anything I eat or drink at people, like a spitball.”

I turned to look at Spitter, trying to envision how exactly it looked. I could see Sweep clearly doing the same thing, grimacing at whatever mental image he’d conjured.

“That’s gross.” The youngest one said, making an exaggerated disgusted face.

“Oh yeah?” Spitter said, leaning in, clearly playing into it. “What’s your deal, kid? What can you do?”

“Name’s Leeroy.” He said without missing a beat, before scoffing like he’d said something funny.

“‘Leeroy’?” Sweep said. “Is that just…your actual name?”

“What, you think I’m stupid?” Leeroy said flatly, staring directly at Sweep. “No it’s not my actual name.”

I stared at Leeroy. Something about that name felt…deliberate. Obviously all of our superhero names were deliberate, but his felt like it was the punchline to a joke only he knew about.

“I can make copies of me.” He continued, smiling widely. “Lots of ‘em too. They don’t stick around for too long but they’re good at doing what I want.”

Sweep nodded, impressed. Then, the room turned to me. Three pairs of eyes staring at me. I felt tiny all of a sudden.

“And you?” Sweep said, smiling.

“Sk-...Skul-....Sku-”

My voice died in my throat.

Fuck.

I froze. This stammer, this fucking stammer.

Whenever I got too excited, or my nerves got the better of me, I locked up. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to speak, I did. But I couldn’t, as if my brain and mouth had fallen out of sync.

I felt the entire room shift, all three staring at me. Was it pity? Embarrassment?

I took a breath, paused, then tried again. “Skullgirl. C-call me Skullgirl.”

A silence hung in the air, long enough that I could feel myself become acutely aware of it.

Spitter piped up. “Rad name, by the way.”

“I-in terms of what I can do,” I said, holding up my right hand, “I c-can manipulate and reshape my bones. Make them harder, shape my hands into claws. I’ve had a b-bit of practice with it but I’m s-still working out the best ways to use it.”

The energy in the room immediately shifted. Leeroy and Spitter looked at me with looks of what felt like…awe?

“You can reshape your bones?” Spitter said, astonished. “That’s gnarly as hell!”

“What kinda things can you turn them into?” Leeroy asked, looking like he was about to take off. “A bone sword? Bone hammer? Armour? Gun?” Each suggestion felt like he was physically getting closer to me.

“I’ve n-not…” I paused for a second. What could I turn my bones into? 

Sword was a no-brainer. 

Hammer, technically yes but more like the head of a hammer. 

Armour felt like it would hurt to make. 

A gun? How would that even work, with that many moving parts.

Sweep raised a hand. “Sorry to cut in - though I will admit I’m very intrigued to see that up close,” he said with a slight smirk, “We need to work on a rough strategy on how we’re going to do this.”

The energy in the room settled as we all looked at him.

“Well,” Spitter said, “Mr. House said it was gonna be a bunch of things, right? Combat, rescue, improvising?”

Sweep nodded. “Right. So my thinking is: we’re a team of four. Perhaps start with having two of us focusing on rescue and two of us focus on combat?”

The three of us looked at each other, nodding. Question was, who did what?

We spent a lot of the next five minutes deliberating.

In Spitter’s case, she’d said her power was very versatile so long as she ate and drank the right stuff.

“I kept a lot of shit on me, just in case.” She’d said with a mischievous grin, before reaching down the front of her costume and pulling out a little container of edible glue and another container of edible ball bearings.

Sweep and I just looked at her, incredulous.

Sweep opened his mouth. “How did you even-”

“I know how to store stuff.” She said with a shrug. “Girls’ pants don’t have great pockets, so I had to learn.”

As for Leeroy, we figured that his cloning could be good for either…

“They’re stupid. And if they can’t do what I want they just melt without doing anything.” He’d explained, clearly irritated by that weakness.

…but we realised that combat could be easier for them.

We all realised Sweep was the most mobile. Being able to control wind meant he could also propel himself in the air, so he could reach people easier. He didn’t object; if anything it felt like he’d wanted to be away from combat.

And as for me?

“I-I don’t know how useful I’ll be at saving people…” I’d admitted, sheepish.

“Settled, then.” Sweep said, almost like he was cutting me off. He clearly enjoyed taking on a leadership role. “Spitter and I focus on rescue, you two focus on holding back whatever they throw at us.”

Almost as if on cue, a loudspeaker blared to life, making us all jump.

“Team B, 30 seconds until the start of your assessment,” Mr. House’s voice crackled.

We all looked at each other. Leeroy practically leapt out of his seat where Sweep seemed to move with an almost practiced elegance. I didn’t move. felt like I was about to be sick.

Spitter tapped me on the shoulder. “Come on, Skullgirl,” She said with a wink. 

“Showtime.”

Young Defenders Office, Action Room B, Meritas City - September 18th, 2014, 14:30PM

Artificer technology is so strange.

That was the first thought that came to my mind as I watched the room we had just been sitting in bleed away like water running down a drain.

The table? Gone. The chairs? Melting into air. The paint? Deleting itself as we speak.

I never understood how someone could make something like this. Artificers were the classification of Super that confused me the most; from what I’d heard, they were people who were specialised into making specific kinds of technology, often in a way that seemed to defy any laws of physics.

And this simulation room was a shining example of an Artificer’s work.

As the room faded away to a bleach-white, colours began to swirl. Above us, the room shifted into a bright blue sky, a light fading into existence like a sun.

We could see the ground change, changing into the dark navy and black of well-worn roads and the greys of sidewalks.

Shapes of buildings, proper skyscrapers, began shaping themselves into existence.

Within a few seconds, we’d gone from a small and quaint break room with a coffee table, to what looked and felt like a living city street; it even got the smells and the wind right.

“Geez…” Spitter murmured next to me. “Mr. House wasn’t kidding about this being realistic…”

I didn’t get much of a chance to take it in, though. In front of us, the centrepiece of our assessment slowly came into focus. It was a skyscraper like many of the others that surrounded us, but it had sustained some nasty damage to its base, with massive gash that was causing it to lean incredibly precariously, like it could topple over any moment.

Immediately, we could hear the cries of people coming from inside the building. Around the building’s base, we saw the culprits.

Mechanical automatons, each one standing at about seven feet tall with a dark brass colouration, their bodies made of sleek metal. Each one was humanoid and near-identical save for the scuff marks and dents that you’d expect to see on a machine like this, and placed in the centre of their heads was a single large glowing eye.

At the base of the building there were about nine of them, each one approaching the building like it was about to start tearing it down.

I looked up towards the top of the building; in addition to the automatons at the base of the building, several were scaling its side towards other people who were either hanging on for dear life to the building’s outside, or trapped inside. People were on all different parts of the building; some hanging on for dear life, some stuck in collapsed parts of the buildings. One person seemed to be on the roof, precarious as the building leaned.

An intercom blared to life again, Mr. House’s voice crackling around us. 

“Your objective is simple. Deal with the situation as best as you can: save as many people as possible, neutralise the threat, and work together.”

As soon as he stopped, it was like a switch flipped. The crowd of automatons in front of us immediately spun, the singular eye in the centre of their heads flaring to life.

“Spitter and I will head to the trapped survivors.” Sweep shouted, immediately running forward. “You two take care of these robots.”

Spitter ran after him, trailing behind him. I watched as Sweep took a couple of steps forward, and then the wind suddenly kicked up; it was like a miniature tornado with him as its eye, dust and debris spinning around him. His next step didn’t touch the ground, as the wind carried him into the air.

I saw Spitter leap into the air, shouting after him as she grabbed onto his boot with one hand, causing him to swear as she caught him.

I turned my attention to the automatons heading towards us.

I took a breath, trying to stay calm.

This was it.

Time show them what I can do.

I looked over my shoulder at Leeroy, who just barely caught my eye before nodding at me. I focused, pooling my power into the radius bone of my right arm, just like I’d shown Crucible and Skate.

The bone erupted from my skin with a wet popping tear, extending into a sharp, pointed spike that extended just past my outstretched arm.

That’s when I noticed something about this uniform; whatever it was made of, it had made a small and neat opening for my bone to extend through without me having to adjust it.

Putting that thought to the back of my mind, I immediately shot forward towards the near automaton, scanning it and trying to see if I could see any weaknesses.

Joints? Too small.

The big eye? That'd work, blind it, or knock out its brain.

I stopped in front of the first one, jabbing with my right arm and sending the bone-blade straight to- 

I missed. 

Completely.

My arm swung against empty air, barely even grazing the metal of its body.

I paused, trying to figure out how I missed so badly, before it’s arm came swinging to retaliate.

I yelped, skipping back a step to dodge before readying my arm again.

Aim for the eye, I thought to myself. I jabbed forward again.

Bullseye.

The bone pierced right through the eye, the yellow light dying down as sparks flew from its now-empty socket. With a heavy thunk, it dropped to the floor.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Could’ve been worse. No nervous breakdowns yet.

I looked ahead to see the other automatons charging towards us. Then I spun my head around to look at Leeroy.

“You oka-?” I stopped as I looked at him, realising he was still standing in place, but was now scrunched up on himself, looking incredibly tense. Then the air around him fuzzing and waving like a mirage.

There was a loud popping sound. Something shot out from Leeroy: a second Leeroy, completely identical to him except for the fact that he looked almost desaturated. The second Leeroy ran past me and into the crowd, heading for another automaton. Behind me, I could hear that popping sound again, and again, and again, as more and more clones of Leeroy shot out of him, bolting towards the group. Within about five seconds, twelve Leeroy clones had emerged and charged towards the Automatons like a mob.

The first clone swung a fist at one of the automatons, his fist clanging against its metallic body; it didn’t seem to actually do anything. Then, three more Leeroy clones leapt to the first one’s side, one of them jumping at the automaton, both feet slamming into its chest in a perfect dropkick. 

The clones didn’t seem to be any stronger than Leeroy was, but the kick was enough to send the automaton toppling to the floor, giving two a chance to stomp its eye in, causing it to go limp.

But as soon as it did, those four clones fuzzed before wafting away like smoke.

The other automatons looked at us before immediately rushing away from us towards the building, much faster than before.

“Shit!” I yelled, running after them. 

I quickly turned my head forward to see what Sweep and Spitter were doing. Sweep was floating about three or four stories up, that wind still visibly swirling around him, with a couple of people draped over his shoulder.

As for Spitter, I could just barely see her perched in an opening on the building’s wall, next to a few survivors.

She looked like she was about to vomit.

She reared her head back, and I swear I saw her throat bloat up, almost like a frog, before she-

A heavy metallic fist slammed into my ribs, knocking me to the ground in a tumble. I quickly pulled myself back up.

My own fault. Should’ve stayed focused.

I took a deep breath and span, facing the automaton.

Stabbing it’s too precise. I thought. So lets’s try-

I clenched my fist. The bone spike that had emerged before retracted back inside my arm, before my hand cracked. The fingers fused together into one lump of solid bone like a mace, shredding the skin of my hand.

I swung, haymakering the automaton in the side. There was a loud clang as my fist made contact, causing it to stagger.

I focused again, this time on my left hand; it morphed to match the right as I kept punching, keeping up the pressure. The hits weren’t elegant at all, but they were consistent.

The robot raised a hand to swing again. I ducked to the side, before punching it right below the eye with an uppercut. 

That was enough, as it toppled to the ground in a heap.

I quickly charged forward, past its dented body and towards the ones crowding around the building’s base.

“L-Leeroy!” I shouted back, turning. He was still hunched over, trying to manifest more clones when he heard me, looking up.

I pointed towards the crowd of automatons. He looked up and started running, that fuzzing air dissipating as he moved. I could see two of remaining clones from before in the middle of clotheslining one of the automatons closest to them before they puffed away.

I looked up to Spitter again, looking like she’d been wiping her mouth. From where she was standing, there was a strange gelatinous string, almost like taffy, extending from where she was inside the building to the ground like a makeshift bridge.

She was ushering the survivors in her section to it, as they bounced down the length of it.

Meanwhile, Sweep had dropped the people he’d been holding to the ground before ascending back to the air again. Of all of us, he looked like he was the most in-control, he didn’t even look like he’d broken a sweat.

I scanned the building quickly: six at the building’s base, three or four scaling the walls. Nine or ten total.

As Leeroy jogged up next to me, I looked down at him. “How m-many can you make at once?”

He looked at me, then looked up as if he was trying to do maths.

“If I put my whole ass into it,” He said, “I can probably make a few dozen at once. They won’t last more than a few seconds though.”

I nodded.

“O-ok.” I said, tensing, feeling my power surge through my arms and legs. “Do as many as y-.”

“You don’t gotta tell me what to do.” He said, cutting me off with a smirk. 

I felt myself clam up immediately, a small pit feeling like it was opening in my stomach. Leeroy didn’t seem to notice how that made me feel; why would he?

He looked ahead, uncertain, before he braced himself. His entire body shimmered again like it was about to evaporate, before a chorus of popping noises - almost like someone cooking popcorn - erupted from his body. 

One by one, Leeroy clones erupted from him like a machine gun, all of them charging forward towards the automatons assembled at the bottom.

I couldn’t have told you how many there were; I think I lost count after about twenty.

It was chaos. The automatons looked genuinely surprised as they turned around to see this sea of Leeroys charging towards them like a tidal wave.

The two crowds collided, slamming into each other. The noise was wild, the repeated sounds of bodies hitting metal, dull clangs sounding all over the place. Leeroys were punching, kicking, and scratching the automatons, performing everything from wrestling moves, to haymakers, even noogies.

One Leeroy tried to kick an automaton in its non-existent balls. I’m fairly sure that clone broke his foot, because he screamed like he’d been shot before he puffed away into mist.

I saw Spitter and Sweep both look down at the carnage.

I just shrugged.

The noise quickly subsided, with lots of the Leeroy clones fading away as quickly as they’d appeared. Within about twenty seconds from Leeroy first unleashing this tidal wave of himself, it had died down, leaving only a couple of battered automatons standing.

Not wanting to waste the chance, I ran forward, arms stretched at my sides with my fingers parallel. I focused my power into my hands and fingers, forcing the bones to meld and stretch.

With a wet tearing, I felt the fingers in both hands meld together; a long, wide, and razor-sharp white blade jutted from each of my wrists, just like I’d demonstrated to Crucible and Skate before.

As I closed on the two automatons, I swung my right hand-blade at the one on the right, aiming for its torso.

A clean hit, the blade slicing through; oil sprayed out of this thing’s body like blood, painting me in scattered dots of black.

Then my arm stopped halfway through, hitting something internally with a thunk. 

I tried to move my right arm.

It was stuck.

I tried again.

Still stuck.

Shit, shit, SHIT!

I was panicking, trying to wrench my arm free. Behind me I could hear the other automaton, its right arm starting to shift and change, plating and gears clicking into place until-

CLANG!

Something slammed into its head with a loud clanging thud, launching its head off of its shoulders as it collapsed in a heap. I looked down at what exactly had hit it.

It was a lump of…dough? About the size of a basketball, which had hit this thing hard enough to blow its head off.

I looked up before locking eyes with Spitter, who was giving me a cheeky thumbs up. I reciprocated, waving my free sword hand.

Focusing, I took a deep breath before swinging at the automaton I was stuck inside with my free sword hand. This one cut through, meeting in the middle and neatly bisecting it.

I pulled my arms away from its body, shaking my sword hands to get the oil it had spilt off of me. It wasn’t coming off.

Great.

I looked at Leeroy, who looked exhausted. He was sweating, red in the face, and wobbling slightly.

Then, he looked at me. My hands were still shaped into those blades, bits of skin and muscle draped around the base of the blades like torn sleeves.

I think this was too much for him, because he vomited, spilling his guts right between us.

“S-sorry!” I apologised, reshaping my hand-blades back into actual hands. Well, the bones of hands; the skin and muscle would take a bit to come back. And they were still covered in oil.

“It's ju-” He gagged, “Making that many clones takes a-” hurk. He waved a hand weakly. “Takes a lot out of me.”

“O-ok, that’s s-somet-”

“But also that’s really gross.” He said, more upright. I had to admit, that stung.

“If you two are done down there,” we heard Sweep yell from above, carrying another person on his back, his voice carrying remarkably well given he was about five stories up at this point; must have been the wind. “We’ve still got people up here.”

I looked up. In the mayhem of Leeroy’s clone army, I hadn’t even noticed that the automatons that had been scaling the building’s wall had been knocked down and collapsed to the ground in a heap; two with basketball-sized dents in their bodies, and two that looked like they’d broken from a fall.

“S-sure! I’m c-coming up!” I yelled back.

Question now was how.

I looked at my hands; the flesh was regenerating pretty quickly, knitting itself back together around the bones. 

Unfortunately I was about to break it apart again, with something I’d only tested once.

I focused, pooling my power into the bones of the palms of my hands, the “metacarpals”. This was more precise than I was used to. I felt the bones in my hands warp and reshape, hooked claws from my palms.

Small hooks - like white climbing hooks or cat's claws - jutted from them. It’d have to do, and I had no idea if it would hold.

I slammed the palm of my left hand into the side of the wall, the new spikes affixing to the glass.

Then reached my right hand up, placing it further up. Both hands held. So far so good.

I kept going, slowly climbing further and further. I wasn’t a practiced climber so this was slow going, but with time I got a couple of stories up.

“H-how many left?” I shouted up.

“Two more, one just above you! Think Sweep’s on his way to check his side.” Spitter shouted back. I turned back to her, she was just smiling at me from her perch where she’d made that strange taffy bridge.

She reared back and spat out that edible taffy-stuff again, whipping her head to the side to make a kind of rope to reach the opening above me.

“I’ll come give a hand!” She shouted as she jumped onto this makeshift taffy bridge, scampering up it like it was nothing.

Then, a shout from above. I jerked my head up to see what it was; a man - one of the simulated survivors - had fallen from wherever he was above me. He was falling fast, in my direction but just barely out of reach.

Spitter swore as he fell past her. I snapped my head around to look at her and Sweep. This guy was falling too fast, and I couldn’t see Sweep at all. They wouldn’t make it in time.

I looked up at the falling man. I could catch him, if I was only a little bit closer.

I looked behind me, then down. Best guess, twenty-foot drop, at least. Could I survive that?

One way to find out.

I launched myself away from the building, into the empty air, getting right under where the man would fall. 

Could I die in a simulation? I thought to myself as I looked up at the man falling towards me. Everything else is a simulation, but the gravity isn’t. The floor isn’t.

I didn’t get a chance to ponder further as the falling man slammed into me, knocking the wind out of my lungs. My power surged on its own, like it was moving on instinct. The bones in my arm erupted from my skin, stretching around me, a cage, surrounding him like a skeletal harness.

We tumbled through the air. 

For a simulation, he felt real too. 

I looked up at this makeshift bone cage I’d made. 

Have I ever made something like this before?

I didn’t get a chance to ponder that any further, as we slammed into the ground.

Everything hurt, down to my bones.

Not surprising, given I’d just taken a fall that could kill most normal people.

But the pain was the first sensation I became aware of. The second, was a voice.

“Jesus what the hell is this kid made of?!” A voice growled.

Then, the sound of cracking bone. Pain again; this time more intense. I shouted as my eyes opened.

I wasn’t in the Action Room anymore. This felt different, sterile. It took a while for my eyes to focus on anything, but it looked like I was stuck in…a web? A cage?

Then it all came back to me. The fall, my power shaping that net of bone from my arms. I could see cracks in it, like someone had tried to rip it apart

Almost immediately as I realised that, my power tensed. The net of bone that had been my arms retracted, as I could feel my bones shape themselves back to normal slowly, the extra mass winding itself back into my body.

“Well, you’re awake at least. Welcome back to the land of the living.” That voice growled again.

I stared up at Mr. House. He looked intense, but also relieved.

“H-how long was I out?” I asked, my voice quiet, strained.

Mr. House looked at me and scoffed. “About twenty minutes. Impressive, honestly; I’ve seen shorter falls kill supers. So congrats on not dying, kid.”

I shifted, and a dull pain throbbed through my body. Somehow, I instinctively knew that I’d broken quite a few bones.

“So…d-did I do ok?” I asked, sheepish.

Mr. House laughed again. “Well,” he said, pulling up a chair, “What you just did was one of the most reckless things I’ve ever seen in the years I’ve been involved in this process; to be blunt, you’re lucky to be alive.”

I felt myself almost shrink.

“But,” he continued, “You did what was asked. You and the rest of Team B collectively passed; how you’re rated individually, that’s for the panel to decide.”

He slid over my backpack, placing it on a chair beside the bed I was sitting on.

“All your stuff’s in there; when you’re feeling fit, get changed and hand your assessment uniform in at the desk. As far as the assessment goes, you’re done for the day, so once you’re changed you can go. You’ll receive a letter within the next couple of working days telling you what the next phase is.”

I looked at him nodding; well, attempting to nod. My neck didn’t move so well.

“What about…” I started, feeling tense, “What about the others?”

“The simulation ended pretty much right after you hit the ground. They were debriefed and given the same line I just gave you. If its worth anything,” he said, smiling, “They were all worried. The other girl didn’t want to leave you like that.”

My heart felt like it skipped, and I could feel tears welling up in my eyes.

I don’t think Mr. House noticed, because he went to leave. But as he opened the door, he turned back to look at me.

“For what it's worth, Skye,” he said, less gravelly than before. “You’ve got a lot of potential. No matter what happens, don’t let it go to waste.”

I froze before I eventually nodded at him. “T-thank you, Mr. House, I…I won’t.”

He nodded, leaving the room and closing it behind him.

I took a moment, now that the room was silent. I didn’t move as I ran things through in my mind.

By the sounds of it, I’d almost died. But, I was still alive; still here.

But now, it was over. My assessment was done. The little team I’d briefly been a part of, separated.

I had no idea if I’d ever see them again.

I muttered to myself. 

“I wish I’d been able to say goodbye…”

And then I noticed something. A little bit of paper stuck onto the side of my bag with what looked like a tiny bit of gum.

I tilted my head quizzically, reaching down to peel it off. Turning it over, I could see there was something scrawled onto it, in pretty rough handwriting:

“u seem cool - spitter”, with a phone number written below.

I couldn’t tell you why,  but reading that felt nice, warm.

I pocketed the paper, smiling.

Maybe I’d actually made a friend through all this.

Williams Residence, Meritas City. September 20th, 2014, 15:00 PM

Two days. 

Two days since the tryout. 

Two days of me trying not to collapse from nervousness.

And now, it was time.

I held the envelope in my hand. It had my name, my address, and the logo for the Young Defenders: a Y and a D inside a golden shield.

I’d been holding it for the last five minutes, not saying or doing anything. 

Just staring.

A small thing, but I felt like I was holding the key to the rest of my life in my hands.

“We gonna open it or are you just gonna treasure the feeling of the envelope?” I heard my dad say, smirking. I turned my head to look at him, trying - and likely failing - to hide my nerves with a smile. He was looking at me from the kitchen.

I took a lot of things from my mom, my dark curly hair being one of them. But I got my height from my dad. He was a beanpole of a man, almost six feet tall with a long face and thinning brown hair. 

He was the first one to make a joke, to try and make me feel better when I felt down. And today he’d been in an especially jokey mood.

“Not helping…” I muttered, shakily, still trying to keep the smile up.

I opened the envelope and pulled out the letter, unfolding it.

Dear Skye,

Thank you for your recent application to join the Young Defenders. We greatly appreciate your interest in our organization and your desire to contribute to our mission of protecting and supporting our community.

After careful consideration and evaluation of your physical assessment and verbal assessment, we regret to inform you that we are unable to continue with your application at this time. This decision was not made lightly, and we encourage you to continue honing your skills and abilities for when the next openings become available next year.

Please understand that the selection process for the Young Defenders is highly competitive, and many strong candidates apply each year. We believe that with dedication and further development, you have the potential to achieve great things.

Thank you again for your interest in the Young Defenders.

Sincerely,

Alexandra Cruz
Young Defenders Human Resources Manager, Hampton Bay, Meritas City
Young Defenders Organization

I felt my heart drop like a stone in my chest. I kept reading the words, over and over again. Maybe I’d misread it, maybe there was an error. 

But no, it was there, crystal-clear in black and white: “we regret to inform you that we are unable to continue with your application at this time”.

I didn’t move. I wasn’t even sure that I breathed.

“So?” Dad said, his voice almost sounding muffled from the other room. “What’d they say?”

I didn’t react, not for a few seconds. I just sat staring at the letter, not even at the words. I heard dad walk towards me.

“Skye?” He asked, the joking tone in his voice gone, sounding worried.

“They didn’t- t-they rejected me.” I said, sounding tiny.

“You’re kidding?” My dad said, taking the letter as I passed it to him. I could hear him mumbling as he read the letter. He ran a hand through his hair as he put the letter down. I must have looked awful, because he quickly stood up and came to my side, wrapping his arm around my shoulder to pull me into a hug.

“I’m sorry, kiddo. I know it sucks to get rejected like that. But I guess there’s next year?” He said, clearly trying to soften the blow. It didn;t help, as much as I wanted it to; I just felt empty, like someone had just snuffed out my dream with a wet towel.

It took me a while to respond. “I…I guess so, yeah.”

“Plus,” He says, “You said you made a friend there. That girl, ‘Spitter’, you said she was great. Maybe she’d put in a good word if she got in.”

My mind went back to Spitter, how she’d done in the simulation. 

I remembered the confidence she had, how she seemed to approach the simulation like it was no big deal. How effortlessly she seemed to take down the combat drones they’d sent against us, how she’d been able to make ropes and bridges to help people. I’d been…less than graceful at points, even before my near-death dive.

“I- I think she gave me her number?” I realised. In the stress of waiting, I’d forgotten about it completely. I fished out from my pocket and grabbed my phone.

“S-should I call her or just t-text her?” I asked, turning my head to look at dad, who was in the middle of making us a coffee each.

He paused for a second, thinking. “If it were me, I’d say call. Might have a lot to say, maybe you can make plans with her too?”

I nodded, slowly. “Dad, y-you don’t mind if I…?”

He smiled, handing me a mug of coffee. “Go for it, kiddo, give her a call.”

I took the mug in one hand, phone in the other, and tapped on Spitter’s number. I headed up to my room as it rang.

My room had become a bit of a mess in the last few weeks, different pieces of fabric strewn over the place, printouts of articles and pictures scattered on my bed. I shot a glance at my floor, which was currently covered in different bits of paper filled with notes on different costume ideas, and ways to use my power.

As I sat down on my bed, the phone picked up.

Fuck.

What did I say?

Apparently my best answer was nothing. I sat there, almost too scared to speak.

Then, I heard Spitter’s voice. “Hello?”

I panicked a bit.

“Sp-Spitter? I don’t know if you remember me, but it’s Sku-”

“Skullgirl?” She interjected. “From the tryouts? Hey, good to hear from you! How’ve you been?” She sounded as upbeat and high-energy as ever.

“I’ve been…good, I guess. Just got my letter.”

There was a pause. A long pause.

“And?” Spitter asked. 

“I- I didn’t…I didn’t get in. T-they rejected me.” Saying it out loud hurt, and I could feel tears stinging my eyes.

There’s a long pause, before Spitter responded. “Oh, shit. You too, huh?”

I straightened up, not believing what I was hearing. “Wait. What do you mean ‘you too’?”

“Yeah I didn’t get in either. Letter came through earlier. Didn’t say why, just the standard shit.”

“But you were amazing! How could they not accept you?!” I shouted, almost angry.

There’s a pause again. “Dunno. I’m surprised they didn’t accept you, you seemed like you had your shit together.”

I laughed. “Me? N-no I didn’t, I was a mess the entire time!”

“You’re kidding, you aced the climbing stuff. And you’re a killer in an up-close fight! And your little death dive at the end. Please don’t ever do that again though, freaked me out!”

I feel my cheeks burn red. It feels odd to have someone actually compliment me like that; so many people I’d shown my powers to had been weirded out; I remembered back to Skate, and Leeroy. This felt different, nice.

“S-say, uh.” I stammer, eyes closed. “Just had a thought, did you want to meet up soon, get a coffee, t-talk a bit more about, f-face-to-face? I think I could use someone to talk to.”

Spitter replied immediately, catching me off guard. “Hell yeah, name a time and place?”

I paused. I didn’t think I’d get that far. “Do you know uh…Common Ground?”

“Yeah, of course I do, been there before. Just in the centre of the Zero Block, right?”

The Zero Block. Meritas’s resident “neutral zone”, where heroes and villains - at least the ones who weren’t complete psychopaths - had to play nice. Had a lot of shopping centres and cafes too, Common Ground being one of many.

“Y-yeah. Sometime tomorrow, maybe midday?”

“Hell yeah. Sounds good.”

“G-good. And uh, since we’re not in the program I guess secret identities are out of the window.” I laughed and paused, taking a breath. “My n-name’s S-…Skye.”

“Elena.” Spitter - or rather, Elena - responded. “Nice name, Skye. See you tomorrow.”

“Y-yeah. See you tomorrow, Elena.”

I put the phone down, staring out into the city streets. It was a lot to process: on the one hand, I’d failed. Rejected from being an officially licensed superhero, and locked out of a chance to try again until next year.

But on the other hand, it seemed like I’d made a friend. A friend with powers of her own. A fellow reject.

Common Ground, Meritas. September 21st, 2014, 12:00 PM

The Zero Block was busy, it always. The very centre of the city, with its clean marble plazas, pristine high-rise buildings, and the massive LED screens beaming adverts and promotions at all times. 

I hated it. It always felt too busy, too overwhelming, like it was just a constant barrage of noise and lights. The crowds here were dense, too, people bustling about and soaking in how clean everything it looked. Eventually, I broke off and made my way towards Common Ground.

Common Ground was familiar, homely even. I’d been to this cafe countless times since I was a kid, though coming here after my tryouts felt immensely different.

Like all Common Grounds across the American Federation, it was plastered with all kinds of superhero and supervillain art, but the Zero Block’s one had something unique; the mural on the right-side wall depicted a beautiful, almost psychedelic scene showing a coiling jet-black serpentine dragon fighting what looked to be a man made of living lightning. 

Anyone alive knew what it was depicting: the New Delhi Disaster, where Long and Indra -  two S-Class superhumans, the strongest kind of supers around - got into a massive brawl.

They ended up wiping the city off of the map. I remembered a lot of protests about the mural when it was first unveiled here given it had only been six months since it had happened, a lot of people saying it was in poor taste.

Aside from that, there were newspaper clippings dating as far back as the One-Day War in the 60s, each one showing some kind of local superhero or supervillain; everyone knew the story of a fresh-faced Lady Liberty lifting half a building over her head to save a group of people trapped in its rubble, and the clipping showed just that, her dressed in what looked like an old-fashioned American flag turned into a dress.

But history wasn’t the only thing that Common Ground was known for; it was one of the only places where you could see other supers - heroes and villains - casually drinking, even talking and laughing with each other. 

That was the rule of Common Ground: it was, well, “common ground”, neutral ground for superheroes and supervillains.

No fights allowed under its roof, or else.

Sure enough, as I looked around I could see several heroes and self-proclaimed “villains” - really closer to gangsters with superpowers - sitting around drinking and eating casually, some even in recognisable costumes of all different colours and styles. 

Local heroes like Thrash and Backfire, as well as more seedy villains; the infamous Mr. Big - an absolutely gigantic man dressed in purple and gold - sat across three separate chairs, chatting to some cronies.

As I looked around, my eyes scanning the cafe to look for Elena, I quickly found her. Pretty much exactly as she found me.

“Skye!” I heard Elena yell from across the cafe, visibly making other people jump from how loud she was. I could feel myself shrink slightly as she waved me over, before I quickly scurried over.

Seeing Elena out of costume was strange. Where the uniforms we’d worn at the tryouts were fairly similar to each other and pretty plain, Elena was wearing a lot of bright colours: a bright jacket split horizontally into three colours - cyan, orange, and magenta - over a bright red shirt and torn blue jeans. It was almost like she was actively trying to be seen, whereas I was very much trying not to be, dressed in a grey hoodie and black leggings.

She was sitting on her own at a small booth to the side, the table covered in both food that had been eaten with the wrappers discarded, and food that was still ready to be eaten, as well as two cups of coffee.

“Don’t mind me, just had to get my fill of the day.” Elena said casually, brushing the discarded wrappers to a corner of the table.

“N-no, it’s cool.” I said, sitting opposite her. Almost as soon as I sat down, she slid a coffee cup to me.

“Wasn’t sure what your pick was so I guessed at a latte. Hope it's ok.”

I nodded. “T-thanks.” I took a sip, taking in the atmosphere of the place. Until I realised that Elena was looking right at me.

“So,” she said, looking at me with a slight smirk, “how’s it feel?”

I could feel myself tense up slightly. “How does what feel?”

“The morning after, getting rejected.” She said, looking directly at me and smirking slightly. I could feel myself redden slightly.

“I, uh…I don’t think its really-”

Before I could finish the sentence, Elena cut in. “Not set in yet? Nah, I feel you. Honestly I felt like that last time too.”

I looked at her sharply. “Wait, what do you mean last time’?”

“Oh I thought I’d said.” She said with a mouthful of a donut, before swallowing. “The other day was my second time. Did it last year, got rejected then too.”

A brief silence passed by as I just stared blankly at her.

“Wait so you got-”

“Rejected twice, yeah.” She said, holding up two fingers. “I was thinking ‘third time’s the charm, maybe next year!’ but at this point? Nah.”

“B-but you were amazing! Your power’s so versatile! The way you were able to spit those wads of d-dough at the combat drones, or spit that glue out to make a bridge, you’re incredible! They’d be insane to not take you!”

I could feel myself getting heated, but I didn’t care. I realised I’d been louder than I meant to be though, drawing a few stares. I quickly shrank back down into my seat.

I noticed Elena was looking at me with a genuine smile.

“Thanks, Skye. Means a lot. But,” she leaned back in her chair, “Don’t matter what you or I think. I think its ‘cause they have an image to keep up.”

“An image?” I asked, tilting my head quizzically.

Elena nodded. “They wanna keep the Young Defenders squeaky-clean. That’s why they passed that windy guy. He’s tall, he’s clean, and his power plays well for the camera. Problem is, you and me don’t fit that mold.”

“Wait, Sweep passed?” I asked. As far as I remembered, he’d spent a lot of the simulation just ferrying people from the collapsing building.

Elena just nodded. “Yep, saw him post about yesterday. I dunno about Leeroy though, he dipped after the simulation ended.”

She leaned forward, whispering almost like she was trying to hide a secret. “See, what I can do? It's cool, it's useful, but it's also gross. You see a girl like me puffing up and puking out glue, or spitting a half-eaten donut like a baseball, and people don’t like it.”

I could feel myself getting angry. “S-so you think they’d mark you down for that, even with how g-good you were?”

Elena leaned back, nodding. “I do. Lemme ask you this, Skye. When you showed off your powers in that interview room, did they look grossed out?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but then I thought about it, casting my mind back to when I was first interviewed for the tryouts. I remembered when I showed off how manipulating my bones actually worked, how Skate had flinched and Dr. Reynolds looked like she was about to vomit.

I remembered back in the simulation, how Leeroy had looked at me before he’d puked his guts up.

I slumped back in my seat, tears welling in my eyes. “S-so what?” I could feel my voice quivering. “Because m-my powers are grisly and b-bloody I’m just…s-stuck?”

Elena looked at me, genuinely sympathetic, before stretching across and putting a hand on my shoulder. “Officially, maybe? But unofficially?”

I looked at her again, narrowing my eyes. “W-what are you thinking?”

She leaned forward, keeping her voice down to a whisper. “What if we, y’know, struck out on our own? Took stuff into our own hands?”

I paused, staring at her. “You mean like, vigilantes?”

Elena loudly shushed me. “Don’t say it so loud! But yeah that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

A lot rolled through my head all at once. This girl - a girl I’d only met three days ago - was propositioning me to start up vigilantism out of nowhere? 

Vigilantism was dangerous; if you were a vigilante, you had whatever support network you had to help you, but that was it. Nothing official, and a lot of hospitals would report you if they realised you were acting as a vigilante. 

That, and a lot of vigilantes were treated in the same way as villains. I’d heard stories of young people killing their superhero careers in the cradle because they’d been too eager to start on their own.

“Elena, I-” I paused, trying to make heads or tails of what she was saying. “If we did vigilante stuff and got caught, they’d lock us up! We wouldn’t even get the chance to be proper heroes!”

Elena just stared at me, her face suddenly completely different. She looked much more stern, even cold. “Let me ask you this. Don’t you want to be a hero?”

The question hit me like a gunshot.

I hadn’t really wanted to confront it, but this rejection had gotten to me way more than I’d realised. 

Maybe I wasn’t good at everything a superhero was meant to be, maybe I didn’t have a perfect image, but the taste of it that I’d gotten at the tryouts was something I knew I’d always wanted.

I wanted it more than anything.

“I- I do…” I muttered. Then again, much firmer. “I do.”

Elena nodded. “Fact is, Skye, we’ve got a gift. A gift we can’t use because some people in suits think we’re grisly and gross. So I say, we do our own thing. If they lock us up for it, fuck ‘em.”

“I still need to…think about it.” I said, my voice low.

I don’t know why I expected her to be angry, but she wasn’t. There was a slight smirk on her face, but I couldn’t tell why she was smiling?

Did she think I’d do it? Was she convinced I wouldn’t? Did she think I’m too cowardly?

“I get it.” She responded, simply and plainly. “If you change your mind, lemme know, ok?”

I just nodded, before she almost immediately stood up.

“Right, I need to go shopping, you wanna come with?”

Right after she made her offer we’d spent some time walking and shopping, before she had to go.

I say “we”, it was mostly her buying odds and ends.

But tonight, I was at home. Dad was out of the house. Hanging out with a few old band mates, so I’d be on my own.

Not that I had anything planned. 

In fact, I’d spent the last 2 hours in my room, lying on my bed and staring at the ceiling, my mind racing.

Much as I didn’t want to admit it, what Elena had said yesterday had struck me. Being a superhero was everything I’d ever wanted; when my power manifested and the reality of it had set in, it was the happiest I’d felt in a long time, even in spite of how it had manifested.

I loved it. The thrill of actually getting stuck in and getting my hands dirty.

The rush from saving people.

The idea of being able to be seen as safe.

I rolled off of my bed and opened my closet, pulling out something that had been hooked onto a large hanger.

My costume. Or at least, the first draft of it.

It was something me and dad had worked on in the weeks after my powers first manifested. Once we saw how my powers worked, I could see him brainstorming. Dad was always the guy with an idea in his head, and he’d set that into making a makeshift costume for me.

It wasn’t anything hi-tech, God knows we could’ve never afforded that. If anything, it was a concept, mostly cobbled together from dad and mom’s old motorcycle gear. A black leather jacket, black leather bottoms, all studded with bits of metal that I’d painted and shaped to look like bone.

Then there was the helmet. An old motorcycle helmet we’d painted white with black accents along the side, before dad had the bright idea to break off the visor and make his own. So he’d made one, painted it white and black like a skull, so it could flip down inside the helmet.

Anyone could tell it was an amateur job, but dad and I didn’t care, it was something we’d loved making. It represented the start of what felt like my true calling.

But staring at it now just made me feel…bad. I felt bad that I may never get to be a superhero, that dad would never get to see me make something of myself.

But then, if I did go full vigilante, how could I stay out of trouble? Wasn’t like the police couldn’t deal with a C-Grade set of powers like mine, after all. I get caught being a vigilante and it goes on my record, I run the risk of getting barred from the Young Defenders for life.

Never mind how my dad would feel, me getting arrested for doing something so stupid.

But even as I thought about that, and maybe it was selfish of me, I knew what I wanted deep down. I wanted to be a hero, I wanted to help people, I wanted to keep people safe.

Maybe it was worth a try?

I looked at the costume that dad and I had made, and nodded to myself. 

One night. Give it one night, and see how it goes.

What was the worst that could happen?

Williams Residence. September 22nd, 2014, 19:30 PM

I had to admit, the costume fit me well.

I looked over it and remembered the little details dad and I had considered: zip-up sleeves that could be undone in case I needed to make an armblade. Tearaway patches in the joints in case I needed to shift my elbows and knees into something.

But even then, something was missing. The black and grey and white seemed a little too static, I needed to add something; a splash of colour.

Not a cape, that’d be way too much. As much as capes were the superhero item, there were very few people who could actually make a cape work. 

I needed something smaller.

I remembered something, an old Japanese TV show my dad had shown me when I was younger. The name escaped me, all I could really remember was how the hero had looked; dressed in green and black with a red scarf around the neck.

I reached into my closet and fished for a bit before I felt it: a long red scarf, one of mom’s. It was light, silky, and flowed well.

I wrapped it around my neck and let it fall behind my shoulder before looking over myself again.

To break up the blacks and whites, was a streak of bright red.

Perfect.

I pulled out my phone and texted dad; just to let him know that I was hanging out with Elena, who I’d called “the girl from the tryouts”. 

Not technically a lie, to be fair. Just nowhere near the whole story.

He sent back a quick message within a minute: “ok, be safe, love u.”

I smiled, sending back a quick “love u too”, before I dialled Elena’s number.

“Elena? It’s m-me, Skye. I’ve m-made up my mind. Are you about tonight?”

Elena made a squeal of delight so loud I had to hold the phone away from me, before she just said “YES, I’d been waiting for you to say yes! Meet me on the rooftop of Wayward Places on Sixth Avenue, between the Zero Block and the Rustbank!”

I laughed slightly. “The r-rooftop?”

“Yes, it’s a good vantage point!”

“I-if you say so. See you soon.”

As I hung up and put the phone in my pocket, I just stood there, pondering.

Am I really doing this? Going out as an illegal vigilante?

Had you asked me a few days ago, I’d have thought it was an insane question. But getting rejected seemed to have lit something up inside me.

I nodded to myself, and opened the window out onto the fire escape. I looked back into my room, to my clothes neatly hidden under my bedsheets, then looked out into the night, before closing the window behind me.

I smiled under the helmet. This was it, the first time I’d be doing something as a superhero, official or not.

And yet, despite that, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a very bad idea.

Rooftop of Wayward Place. September 22nd, 2014, 21:00

I regretted not putting on something warmer.

I stood on the rooftop, looking down over Meritas City. This beautiful, massive city, a proper haven for superheroes and supervillains of all types, with a skyline that stretched into the horizon. 

The rooftop we’d decided to meet was wedged in the streets between the Zero Block and the Rustbanks; we really couldn’t have chosen a better place to see the city at its best and its worst.

Unfortunately, we’d decided to do this in the middle of an autumn night, and it was cold. I tried not to shiver, which ironically made me shiver even more.

You would have thought the scarf would have helped, but it really didn’t. It flowed nice, though; flying behind me in the autumn wind.

As I waited for Elena, my mind was racing; should I be doing this? What if I get caught or arrested?

But I kept thinking about how I’d spent a lot of the last few years: lonely, quiet, unassuming. Part of me knew that if I didn’t do something, I’d be spending the next year just waiting, doing nothing.

My powers manifesting a few months back was the first trigger, the first sign that I had something I could actually do.

The Young Defenders accepting me for the original tryouts was the second, but that had gone up in smoke.

Maybe tonight was the night I did something that mattered.

My train of thought was stopped in its tracks by a thud behind me. I spun around, only to be met with a panting Elena, who had clearly sprinted up the building’s fire escape.

“I might’ve…rushed too…too much.” She panted, hands on her knees. She held up a finger as if trying to make me wait before standing up, exhaling.

I looked her up and down, looking at her costume. Compared to me - all dark and angular with blacks and whites - Elena’s costume was much more bold, bright orange with black accents, like some kind of exotic animal, with a pair of goggles currently resting on top of her head with what looked to be a pair of bright orange frog eyes painted on. 

The costume itself looked solid; clearly made from bits and pieces of clothing in the same way mine was made from motorcycle gear.

Elena looked up at me as I looked down at her, then smiled. “Damn!” She exclaimed. “Loving the tall, dark, and gloomy vibe!”

“R-really?” I asked, my voice muffled slightly by the helmet. I flipped up the mask-visor to get a better look at Elena.

“Y-you look good too.” I said.

“Thanks!” Elena said, beaming. “Been working on it for a bit. Decided to lean into the freaky frog-girl vibe, y’know?”

I nodded, before pulling out my phone. “S-so I was trying to listen to some emergency scanners.” I said, opening up a webpage on my phone, one that allowed people to listen in on police scanners.

“Wow, you don’t waste time.” Elena said, stepping towards me. “Anything good?”

I shook my head. “N-nothing that’s not either too big or already being dealt with. Lemme see if there’s-”

Almost immediately, the app buzzed to life, the crackly voice of a man bursting from the speaker.

“Any available units, we have reports of an active robbery at Old Lee’s on Fourth near the Rustbank, please respond ASAP”.

There was a pause as Elena and I looked at each other, realising the same thing.

“T-that’s only-”

“A couple blocks away?”

“W-we could help, we could-”

Before I could finish, Elena was already running towards the building’s fire escape.

“W-wait!” I yelled, trying to catch up to her.

“Why wait, Skye?!” Elena shouted back, grinning with glee. “This is it, this is our moment to shine!”

“I was just t-thinking, w-what do we call ourselves?”

That stopped Elena dead in her tracks, and she looked at me like I’d just started babbling at her.

“‘What do we call ourselves?’ We already know: Spitter and Skullgirl!” She shouted, incredulous.

“B-but won’t people know who we are?”

“Only people that know us by those names are you, and me.”

I paused, looking at her. I think she knew exactly what I was thinking because she just stared at me. “That’s n-not entirely-”

“Who’d you tell? Aside from Leeroy and Sweep; fat chance of us meeting either of them tonight.”

“Y-you remember Mr. House from the t-tryouts?” I asked, sheepish.

Elena slammed the palm of her hand into her forehead. “You told him?”

“H-he asked me if I had an alias and I just-” I trailed off, as I could hear Elena groan. She looked at me, genuinely annoyed for a second before she started laughing.

“It’s fine.” She said, laughing. “So long as we don’t run into him specifically, I’m sure we won’t get outed.”

She smiled at me, flashing a mischievous grin. “Now come on, Skullgirl. We got a robbery to stop.”

We’d rocketed down the fire escape as quick as we could before we set to running to Old Lees’s. The streets heading towards the Rustbank got rougher and rougher as we went; the Rustbank, back when Meritas was still young, was the thriving industrial sector of the city, the beating heart of a lot of its working class.

Unfortunately, as years went by, the Rustbank’s businesses either closed down or got taken over by larger conglomerates; one of my uncles had been let go from one of the factories when I was a kid, dad said it had broken the poor guy. 

In the last decade, it’d become something of a haven for both small-time supervillains and vigilantes, a place that even The Union and the Young Defenders rarely stepped into.

I had to admit, something about heading to the Rustbank for our first night doing vigilante work felt like a bad omen.

As we ran towards Old Lee’s, we could hear the trilling of the store’s alarm. We turned the corner, diving behind a wall before peeking our heads out to look at the scene.

The windows to the store were smashed in. I could hear a bunch of voices overlapping, all men. A couple of them were standing outside on the sidewalk; both were pretty big, easily six feet tall and built like oxen. One was completely bald while the other clearly didn’t want to admit he was going bald, with a combover that looked like it could fly off in a stiff breeze. Both of them were holding a pistol in their hand; they didn't look like Engineer-tech pistols to me, but I wasn’t sure at a glance.

“How long’s it take to put money in a bag?!” Combover barked in a thick old Brooklyn accent, his voice sounding like he gargled stones on the daily.

“Longer if you don’t keep yer trap shut!” Another voice yelled from inside the shop, same accent but much higher and nasally.

I turned back to Elena.

“Ok, s-so,” I started, “At least five people I can hear, two up front and the rest in the shop. Got guns, n-no idea if they’re Engineer-made or not.”

Elena looked like she was pondering for a second before nodding. “Ok, seems easy enough.”

I just stared down at her from behind my helmet, unzipping my jacket’s sleeves and rolling them up. “Have you b-been in a fight? Like, against actual p-people?” I asked, somewhat incredulous.

She just shrugged. “Sure, when I was a kid. Besides, I’m gonna be spitting at them from over here, you’re gonna be the one fighting them?”

“Me?!” I asked, stunned, still trying to keep my voice down.

“You’re the one who can make bone blades, where else would you be?” She then stopped and I could see her face drop. “Please tell me you can fight.”

“I-I can.” I admitted. “I did well in the combat part of the simulation. Can’t be much d-different against people just…less l-lethal.”

Elena breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Anyway, we’re wasting time, let's go.”

“W-wait!”

She pushed me out of the alleyway gently. “Give ‘em your best one-liner!”

I stumbled out from the corner into the open street, barely managing to stay upright. Somehow, the two outside hadn’t seen or heard me.

I took a breath, and in the strongest voice I could muster, shouted: “S-stop right c-criminal sc-”

BANG!

I yelped as I heard the gunshot, raising my left arm in front of me, feeling its bones shudder before-

SHRRK-

My left arm tore itself open, blood and flesh scattering as the bones in my forearm and hand rapidly flared out and expanded, before flattening into a roughly-circular shape, like a shield emerging from my arm, just barely big enough to cover my chest and block the bullet.

I felt the shot crack against my bones; it hurt, but not nearly as much as I knew getting shot in the bones should hurt.

“Shit, its a super!” I heard Combover’s voice. I saw him frantically try to aim his gun and almost drop it. 

I shot forward in a panic, adrenaline shooting through me like lightning; I ran towards the bald one as he fired two more shots, both cracking against my shield, the second one tearing through it and ripping my jacket’s shoulder.

As I neared him, I spun on my heel to kick with my right leg. I tensed as my leg made contact with his left side, the bones in my foot and shin solidifying and locking in place; I felt a crunch in his ribs and heard air rush out of his lungs in a pained wheeze, before he collapsed to the ground in a thud, groaning in pain.

Holy shit, that worked. I thought to myself, genuinely impressed with myself.

I quickly turned to Combover, only to find myself staring down the barrel of his gun.

I could feel time freeze. 

This was it. My first night out as a vigilante and I died before a minute was up.

I felt my life flash before me in a second. Playing in a park with mom and dad as a kid. The crash. My powers triggering. The tryouts.

THUNK!

I snapped back to reality.

Something had hit Combover in the centre of his stomach, causing him to groan and double over in pain, the grip on his gun loosening. I looked down at what had hit him; it looked like…meat? A lump of meat about the size of a baseball.

I looked back to where it had some from; I saw Elena rearing back.

It was the strangest thing, watching her do this. She fully reared back like she was charging up, and her throat puffed out and expanded, like a frog.

And then-

PLEGH!

A wet sound as she spat, sending another lump of meat directly at Combover. This one hit him straight in the head with a solid smack, his eyes rolling back as he hit the ground like a fallen tree.

I stood there, looking down at him before turning back to Elena. But she’d turned around, looking inside the store.

Inside the store I could see the other three: one tall and skinny, with an angular face and wispy black hair; another of a more average height, dark skin with a beanie; and the third man, short and squat, probably the same height as Elena, holding a bag full of cash.

What struck me was that the dark-skinned man and the short one both had a tattoo around their right eyes: a black spade, like the kind you’d see on a playing card.

I paused for a second, looking past them. Behind the counter, I could see the cashier - an elderly Chinese man in a stained white shirt - looking on, scared. I turned back to the three and charged forward.

The short man with the bag full of cash pointed a finger at me, and mimed like he was firing a gun.

There was a rush of air, then I felt something slam me in the chest. Like I’d been punched, hard.

I felt my ribs crack as the air shot out of me, before I was launched back, flying across the street and slamming into a wall.

I crumpled, collapsing to the ground in a heap.

Another super? I thought to myself, dazed.

I tried to pull myself up, but it was a struggle. I focused my power, trying to sense if there were any breaks; aside from the bullet holes in my arm-shield, my ribs had cracked. 

That explained why it was hard to breathe.

I looked up to see Elena. She was spitting more of those meat balls at the three goons; her aim was good, but they were getting better at dodging her. Not just that, they were closing in on her.

I pulled myself to my feet, groaning. I focused again, sensing the cracks in my ribs mending themselves. 

Wait, what?

I knew my body healed fast when I transformed my bones, but I didn’t realise it’d heal if I got injured normally.

I looked down at my arm-shield; save for a hole where the bullet from before had shot through it, it was mostly intact.

It would have to do.

On shaky legs, I ran forward, almost stumbling before I picked myself back up, charging at the squat man who had launched me.

“How the shit are you movin’?!” He yelled, pointing a finger at me again. I raised my arm-shield up to block it.

I felt that same rush of air impact it.

It shattered.

I screamed as a sharp pain shot through my left arm, as bone fragments flew around me, clattering to the ground. 

My left arm hung there, open and exposed, chunks of skin and muscle hanging loosely. The bones of my right forearm jutted out of the stump like a jagged spike.

My arm felt like it was screaming, the pain burning. Even with my power dulling it, this still hurt.

I turned to the short man, who now looked visibly exhausted, sweating and red in the face. Maybe that was his limitation, that firing repeatedly wore him out?

It was the best thing I had to go on.

I tried to focus, letting the adrenaline and my power dull the pain. I continued moving towards him, focusing on him.

I was twenty feet away.

He fired again.

I swerved to the side, and I heard the tarmac behind me crack.

Ten feet away.

“Quit…movin’!” He gasped.

With a much shakier hand, looking like he was about to pass out, he pointed at me again.

He fired again.

His aim was way off, as I heard glass in a window on the other side of the street shatter.

I was up in his face now.

I reared back my right arm and swung, focusing my power into my hand, making it solid and dense.

My fist made contact with his stomach, and I heard him groan in pain.

He dropped to the ground, panting and sweating.

I turned around quickly; one of the other goons - the tall and dark-haired one - had dropped, slumped on the ground with a meat ball by his head. The other one was closing in on Elena, and-

Sirens. 

The three of us stopped. 

I glanced at Elena, who looked to the last man standing. He looked between me and Elena, before looking at the faint flashing red and blue lights that rounded the corner.

“I’m guessing by the mishmash costumes, you two are vigilantes?” He asked, his voice gravel-deep.

Neither of us responded. We just stared at him, tense.

“Silence tells it all.” He muttered, smirking, and tore off his shirt.

An awful grinding, gravelly sound filled the air, like rocks rolling in a blender.

Hundreds of tiny interlocking stones crawled out from under his skin, forming a rocky armour around his arms, chest, and neck.

He cracked his knuckles, fists like boulders. “Best guess, we got two minutes before the cops rock up. Winner gets to walk.”

We didn’t get a chance to respond as he bolted towards Elena.

“S-shit!” I shot forward.

He was slow - looked like those rocks were weighing him down. I dropped low to kick out his legs from under him-

He pivoted suddenly, way quicker than I expected, and swung one rock-covered arm like a sledgehammer.

I yelped, scrambling back as the hand cratered the ground where I had just been with a crunch, before pulling myself to my feet.

PLEGH!

Elena spat again, another wad of meat splattering into the back of his head. He didn’t even flinch, his head just jerked back to glare at her.

Hit him now, quick! I screamed in my own mind. I shot forward, rearing my right arm back, focusing on the fingers of my right hand. They solidified, fusing my fist into a jagged white mace.

I drove it into his stomach-

CRACK!

Something broke in my right hand, pain shooting up my arm.

Not there! I screamed at myself again.  Wrong spot, right in the stomach, where the stone armour seemed to be densest. 

The cracked bones in my hand quickly knitted back together.

He just looked down at me, chuckling.

“Nice aiming, kid.” He smirked, before kicking me in the chest. 

The leg wasn’t armoured, but it didn’t matter. I felt the wind leave my lungs again, and I hit the ground.

My ribs cracked in my chest. Again.

PLEGH!

Elena spat again. Smaller wad this time, useless. 

“Fucking- Will you knock it off?!” He cursed, spinning to charge at Elena. She slid off of the car that she’d been perched on, before darting into the store.

I forced myself up. My ribs were quickly mending themselves, but my left arm was still mangled. 

Why isn’t it healing like the rest of me..?

I didn’t have time to think about it as I rushed towards him again. He was moving towards Elena, clearly thinking I was out for the count.

Joke’s on him.

I tried to assess as I ran. Upper half covered in stones, harder to hit; lower half not covered, more flexible but more vulnerable?

Aim low. I thought. As I got closer, I stretched out my mangled left arm.

I can’t let him get to Elena, I can’t-

Suddenly I felt something shift in my left arm, my power surging. The jagged, ruined bones in my arm suddenly extended forward, stretching into misshapen hooks of bone.

I just looked at my arm, confused. But I wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

I swung my arm towards him, sending these jagged hooks in a wide arc. They scraped against the ground before catching him in the back of the leg. He howled in pain as he stumbled, falling to one knee.

His head spun around to look at me, eyes wild. 

He swung his hand around, and I wasn’t able to move in time.

It hit me in the side of my head like a hammer, and I could feel my helmet crack on the left side. The world tilted over, and I hit the ground with a hard thunk.

My head swam. My vision blurred. I couldn’t move right, my legs unsteady. I felt the hooks that had extended from my left hand snap off, leaving my mangled left arm as it was before.

He towered over me, standing unsteadily on his one good leg. 

“Hey, asshole!” 

Elena? 

I craned my neck to look where I heard her voice.

She was standing in the doorway of Old Lee’s, bottle of hot sauce in one hand and a donut in the other.

She quickly downed both.

Then, she reared back again, her throat swelling up and glowing a deep red before-

PLEGH!

She spat again, launching a ball of dough that looked like it was steaming, glowing red. It flew fast, slamming him in the face.

The dough hit him hard enough that it stuck to his face. He screamed in pain, muffled, grasping at his face to get it off.

I strained, pushing myself to my feet again with one arm. 

Panting, I punched him in the back of the head, sending him to the ground with a thud.

It was over. All five of them down, either groaning or unconscious. 

I felt like I was going to throw up, my head swimming and my left arm throbbing in pain.

The sirens were getting closer.

I looked up to Elena.

“W-we should…” I croaked out, my voice shaky. 

Elena nodded, running towards me. I could see her eyes dart to my mangled left arm, as she retched slightly.

“I-it looks…w-worse than it is…” I whispered as we ran down an alleyway.

We stopped about a block away, darting into an abandoned building. It was dark and dirty, probably not the best place to stop given the state of my left arm, but that was the furthest thing from my mind.

I slumped to the ground, the adrenaline finally wearing off and the pain setting in. I groaned as I did, panting. I felt Elena slump beside me, panting.

“Holy…holy shit, Skye.” Elena said, catching her breath. “That was-”

“Terrifying?” I replied, turning my head slightly to look at her.

“Amazing!” She squealed, her face lighting up. “You were awesome, you kicked the fuck out of that guy! The way you tanked those bullets, how you got up from being launched across the street!”

I laughed, short and breathy. I had to admit, it felt good to hear Elena say that. Her energy was infectious, and it felt good, really good.

“Y-you were awesome too, Elena. The d-dough and sauce? H-how did you know that would-?!”

“I didn’t!” She said, sounding about as surprised as me, still laughing. “I panicked, saw them both and thought they’d mix. Had to apologise to Mr. Lee though.”

We cracked up, though my laugh quickly turned into a pained cough.

She then looked at my arm, and visibly winced.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” She asked, staring at it.

I looked down. 

It was pretty bad. 

Most of my left forearm was just gone. The bones had shattered just before the elbow; A lot of the skin and muscle was still hanging around it too, like torn cloth. 

“A little.” I admitted, wincing as I shifted where I was sitting. “N-not as much as it looks. And it’ll get better soon.”

It wasn’t healing as fast as the rest of me. Maybe there was a catch to what parts of me healed quicker.

It wasn’t bleeding anymore though, which was a plus. 

“Still,” Elena said, her voice softer, “Maybe we should bandage it, just to be safe?”

I nodded.

I sat there alone, finally letting myself relax - well, as best as I could with half an arm slowly regenerating - while Elena ran off to get bandages.

Now that I was alone, I could sit with how bad the pain actually was. My power dulled the pain from my body tearing itself apart like this, but this was different.

I sighed. Thank god I’m right-handed. I thought to myself, laughing slightly.

Still, this felt right, somehow. Not sitting in an abandoned building with half my arm busted, but what we’d just done; fighting bad guys, helping people, getting back up.

It felt…good.

I wondered what dad would’ve thought if he’d found out; would he have killed me, or been proud of me? A mixture of both?

I stared at the ceiling, just letting myself rest for a second.

But I realised I had an audience. 

A small rat, sitting some ten feet away from me on a windowsill, just staring at me.

I looked at it, but it didn’t move. It just sat there, watching me.

I couldn’t stop looking at it. I was waiting for it to do something, to make a noise, to-

I turned as I heard Elena crawl through a broken window.

“Hey, sorry. Had to go to a different shop to get bandages, but I decided to sneak a peek at the scene of the crime.” She said with a cheeky grin.

I shifted, sidling up to her as she unwrapped the bandages. My eyes poked back up to where the rat had been sitting; it was gone.

“D-did you see anything?” I asked.

“Not much,” she said as she wrapped my arm up, surprisingly gentle. “Couple of cop cars taking away the goons that were on the ground. Owner was talking to the cops.”

“D-did they say anything about us?” I asked.

“Nah,” She finished bandaging my arm, admiring her handiwork. “Couldn’t get close enough to make anything out.”

“N-not bad.” I said, standing up. “B-better than walking around with a meat scarf around my hand.”

Elena laughed. “Don’t call it a meat scarf, dude!”

She stood and brushed herself off. “So…What do we do now? Sandwich?”

I looked at her, incredulous. “You seriously w-want a sandwich after seeing that?”

She shrugged. “Fighting and spitting made me hungry, sue me.”

We walked for a bit, trying to look a bit more casual; I tucked my helmet into a bag, and wrapped my jacket around my waist. Not a huge difference, but it was something. 

We found a 24-hour sandwich shop. I went for something simple: turkey and cheese. Elena on the other hand went for a monstrosity that looked like it had everything on it.

We got about three bites in before my phone started buzzing. 

An alert.

Citizens Warning. Nemesis-Grade Supervillain Detected.

I froze. 

Nemesis-Grade supervillains were the worst of the worst; where most supervillains still abided by a code of honour, Nemesis-Grade supervillains disregarded them. They were walking disasters, incredibly destructive and capable of building up massive body counts on their own.

Elena noticed immediately. She stopped eating. “What?”

I didn’t answer.

“Skye?” Her voice dropped. “What’s wrong?”

I pulled up the police scanner webpage from before and listened to it.

“All units, be advised: we have reports of a mass casualty event in the Rustbank.”

Then- BOOM!

There was an explosion, several blocks away. Smoke rose in the distance.

The scanner crackled to life again.

“Positive ID on a supervillain at centre of mass-casualty event in the Rustbank: Slaughterhouse. Repeat: Slaughterhouse located in the Rustbank.”

My blood ran cold.

I looked up at Elena. She looked like she was going to be sick.

Fuck.

Derry’s Deli, Meritas City. September 22nd, 2014, 22:15

Most people I knew had a list of supervillains; the most dangerous, the most powerful, and the ones you’d want to meet the least.

There were a lot of common names on those lists: Darwin, Zero, Sphere, Hiroshima, they were some of the most common ones, but they were all S-Classes, walking one-man apocalypses; obviously they’d be on the list.

Slaughterhouse was different. She wasn’t the strongest of supervillains, not by a mile; and yet, she had a body count that would have made armies blush.

There had been twelve different people with the mantle of Slaughterhouse, and never more than one at a time. All of them had varied assortment of weird and visceral powers, and a fondness for ritualistic mass violence.

The current Slaughterhouse - Slaughterhouse Twelve - was a woman, and she’d been operating for about five years; apparently one of the longest-lasting Slaughterhouses, she’d racked up a body count that some believed numbered in the thousands.

So hearing the police scanner say that Slaughterhouse wasn’t just in Meritas City, but only about a dozen blocks away from where Elena sat, made my stomach drop like a ten-ton weight.

“Please tell me I didn’t hear that.” Elena said quietly, staring up at me. I hadn’t looked away from my phone, still staring at it like I was trying to change reality.

“Nope, t-that’s…y-you heard that right. Slaughterhouse…” I stammered.

“We gotta go, Skye. Now.” Elena said, her voice becoming firm. 

I nodded, grabbing what was left of my sandwich and stuffing it in my bag.

We got onto the sidewalk and I looked towards where we’d heard the bang, seeing plumes of smoke billowing in the distance from the Rustbank.

A couple of cop cars raced past, sirens blaring.

I stared at the smoke in the distance; it felt like I couldn’t look away from it.

My mind flew back to when I was younger, almost ten years ago, back to my mom. 

I couldn’t tell you why that image came into my mind. Maybe the idea of a “mass casualty” set it off, I don’t know. 

But, despite everything, despite every logical part of my brain telling me otherwise, I felt a need to see if people needed help.

I took a step towards the smoke, when I felt Elena grab onto my wrist.

“Skye, what are you doing? We gotta go, now.” She said, her voice firm.

I turned to look at her. I must have looked tense, because I remember her eyes widening as she saw my face.

“I…I can’t just…” I said, struggling to get the words out. “I can’t just walk away. I know I should, I know that I should head back home and be safe but I-“

“Are you nuts?!” Elena said, sounding both angry and worried. “We just got into a scrap with some two-bit crook and a few goons. Yeah we kicked ass, but you’re down an arm!” She said, pointing to my bandaged arm. “And you think we can come anywhere close to fucking with Slaughterhouse?!”

I knew she was right, that was the worst thing. I was down an arm, and there was no logical reason why I felt so compelled to go after her.

“I just…I don’t like the idea that I could be leaving people to die.” I finally said, barely a whisper.

Elena let out a breath and put a hand on my shoulder. “You’re not letting people die, Skye. We’d be mulched if we got anywhere near her.”

There was a sudden rushing sound from above. We looked up to see a golden streak flying through the sky, fast, and headed straight for the Rustbank.

“Besides, looks like somebody’s here to kick her ass for us.” Elena said, pointing up.

I sighed. “Y-you’re right, I’m sorry. It’s just-”

“Don’t be, I get it. You want to help people, but sometimes things ain’t our problem.”

I nodded, though in truth I didn’t feel good about it. 

We started walking, heading back in the direction of mine and dad’s apartment. The streets were packed all of a sudden; nighttime in Meritas was always busy, but it looked like everyone was trying to get as far away from the Rustbank as possible.

People looked panicked and scared; some were running but most were just walking fast.

Me and Elena tried to blend into the crowd, keeping a low profile.

We got about a block away before we heard the next bang.

It was loud, and as we turned around we saw a flash of golden light from the Rustbank.

Elena stared, mouth agape. “What in the fu-”

SKRSH.

Something smashed into the side of a nearby building, dust and debris bursting out from where they impacted. I heard people scream, ducking away and running.

We ducked, coughing and shielding our faces.

When the dust cleared, we saw something embedded in the wall.

It was a person, one leg bent awkwardly behind them at a bad angle, blood smeared down the side of the building. Their chest rose and fell slowly, but they were moving - very much still alive.

We heard something, a strained, low feminine voice. “That little…cheap-shotting bitch…”

She pried herself from the building that she had cratered into, growling as she dropped and hit the ground. There was a cacophony of loud crunches as her left leg - the one that had been bent and cracked at a bad angle - bent itself back into shape.

She shook her head like she was trying to wake herself up, before she looked up at us, at the large crowd that had started to circle around her.

We couldn’t see her eyes behind the black voids of the wolf helmet she was wearing. But we could see her smile, a wide smile of razor-sharp teeth.

A smile that looked almost hungry.

She was tall, a couple of inches taller than me but much more broad. She was dressed in what looked like a grey butcher’s apron which was absolutely caked in blood, worn over a dark red shirt. On the centre of the apron was some kind of bright sigil, looking like a clawed, grasping hand.

The eyes of her wolf’s helmet obscured much of her face, but I swear I could see faint red pinpricks of light from the eye sockets, burning holes into our souls. Her hair - long, dark, matted like a wild mane - flowed from the back of that helmet

I felt my stomach drop as I realised who this was. 

Slaughterhouse.

People screamed and ran, fanning out in every direction.

I couldn’t move, until Elena grabbed my hand and yanked me forward. We ran.

“So noisy…” I heard Slaughterhouse growl. 

I glanced back as we ran; she was holding her right arm out, before the palm of her hand unfurled like a blooming flower.

Then there was the sound: a wet, meaty cracking squelch. 

Strands of thick red tendrils like fleshy wires extended from her unfurling hand, before she swung her hand in a wide arc.

I screamed, diving to the ground and taking Elena with me.

Those red coiling tendrils barely breezed over us.

Then came the sounds.

The thuds and cracks of bodies being struck, before hitting the ground.

Screams of pain, many just going silent.

Several people didn’t even fall. They just came apart, like ragdolls filled with meat, as peoples’ limbs broke and scattered across the street.

It was absolute carnage. 

Within seconds, the entire street we’d been standing on was caked in blood and bodies; some people were crying out and screaming, but so many bodies laid motionless on the ground.

Elena was still holding on to me like a vice, both of us lying on the road. Neither of us wanted to let go, as if that would somehow stop her.

Slaughterhouse looked around, like she was admiring her handiwork. A quick rushing slurp, and the tendrils had retracted back into her hand, which sealed itself shit like nothing happened.

Her eyes scanned the surroundings before her eyes locked.

Onto us.

I swear I could hear a low chuckle as she took another step towards us. I heard myself whimper and Elena curse, as we shuffled back, terrified.

Then, another boom cracked the ground between us and her, a glowing golden silhouette landing.

It took a second for my eyes to focus as the glow dissipated and this figure stood to her full height.

She was probably a couple of years older than me, with long blonde hair that cascaded down her back. She was wearing a black and gold armoured dress with a golden star on the chest, as well as a golden visor over the eyes.

It was Glory.

Fuck.

She straightened her shoulders, cracked her neck, and turned her head to look over her shoulder at us. 

I was panicking, fumbling with getting my helmet back on from my bag, trying to hide my face.

Why did she have to be here the same night I decided to be a vigilante?!

“You two, get to safety, it’s not-!”

She stopped as she saw me.

I stopped, halfway through finally slotting my helmet around my head.

She looked me dead in the eyes. 

I watched the recognition spread across her face, the shift in her body language. 

She’d seen me.

Now she recognised me.

“Bone girl?” She asked. “From the tryouts?”

I didn’t respond, or rather, I couldn’t. Every word I could’ve said just died in my brain. I could see her looking me and Elena up and down, noticing my bandaged arm.

I just pushed the helmet down around my head.

She didn’t say anything else, rolling her eyes as Slaughterhouse took a few steps towards her.

Glory took a step towards her in turn, interposing herself between us and Slaughterhouse. “Alright psycho-bitch”, she shouted, her voice brash and loud. “Union’s best are on the way, but for now you’re stuck with me. Stand down now and I won’t rock your shit across the city again!”

She slammed her right fist into the palm of her left hand, the golden glow around her flashing as if to punctuate her words.

There was a pause, before I realised that Slaughterhouse’s shoulders were shaking.

She was laughing.

“You?” She said, practically chortling with laughter. Her voice was ragged, she sounded almost like a growling dog. “Do you honestly think I have anything to fear from you? Anyone can pull a sucker-punch, you’re not special.”

Glory noticeably bristled, that golden aura intensifying.

“We’ll see.” She said, “We’ll see how you feel when I kick your head off your shoulders.”

Why?

Why Slaughterhouse?

Why tonight?

Why Glory?

It felt like the universe had it out to get me, like it had a desire to spoil everything.

Me and Elena had pulled ourselves to our feet, standing behind Glory - this bombshell of a superhero who practically glowed with asskicking and bravado - as Elena clutched onto me.

Across from Glory stood Slaughterhouse, a villain who looked like she’d walked out of a slasher film.

There was a pause. Complete silence, save for the distant sirens.

Then, the ground under Glory’s feet cracked. She launched off of the ground like a missile, heading straight towards Slaughterhouse at lightning speed, trailing golden light behind her like a comet.

She reared back her hand to punch, threw a jab and-

Missed?

She flew directly over Slaughterhouse, who had ducked, almost effortlessly. Glory went sailing a good dozen or so feet behind her before coming to a stop in the air, floating.

Slaughterhouse then turned, staring straight at the noticeably confused Glory.

“What?” Slaughterhouse asked. “Are you really surprised I didn’t let you hit me a second time?”

Glory snarled, rocketing towards Slaughterhouse again.

This time, Slaughterhouse didn’t dodge.

There was a loud crash, and a flash of golden light. As the light cleared, I could see Slaughterhouse had slammed Glory in the stomach with her open hand, catching her charge head-on.

But Glory didn’t seem fazed.

Where Slaughterhouse had hit her, Glory’s body - or maybe the air around it, it was hard to tell - was crackling with golden light. And Glory didn’t look hurt; she was grinning.

The light shot from Glory’s stomach to her right leg, causing it to glow a bright golden-white as she immediately kicked up, catching Slaughterhouse in the ribs and launching her into a building. It sounded less like a kick and more like a gunshot.

Glory looked up at where Slaughterhouse had landed, then her eyes widened.

There was a low growl from Slaughterhouse. More of those fleshy tendrils were snaking out from the dust before lashing out at the ground.

And then, came Slaughterhouse herself. Her right arm had morphed again just like before, unfolded into that mad tangle of blood-red lashing tendrils. She swung her arm like a whip, the tendrils crashing down onto Glory like a wave.

Each one slammed into Glory, and each one bounced off harmlessly, the golden light pinging every single one away from her.

Slaughterhouse reared back as she landed, both feet planted in a puddle of blood, the tendrils retracting back into her arm again.

Glory was just floating there about a foot off of the ground, hand on one hip, yawning, still glowing with that golden light.

“So are you going to actually, like, try?” Glory said mockingly. It felt like this was a game to her, despite the mess of blood and body parts scattered around us.

Slaughterhouse swung again.

This time, Glory seemed to disappear, zipping about three feet to the left, deftly dodging the tendril. Another crash, another zip away.

She’s fast. I realised, dumbstruck.

Suddenly, Slaughterhouse dropped down, disappearing into the puddle of blood she’d landed in, like she’d dived underground.

I felt myself tense up, my eyes darting. I could feel Elena doing the same.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Elena cursed, scrambling. She got on top of a nearby car, pulling me up with her.

Glory was now hovering about ten feet in the air, looking around, keeping watch for-

Something erupted from beneath Glory, emerging from the scattered blood she’d been floating above.

It was Slaughterhouse, shooting upwards like a rocket, coated in blood.

She launched herself at Glory, cackling. She got enough air to meet her in the air before grasping out, trying to slam Glory in the neck.

She made contact. But not with Glory, with the golden light around her.

It's a forcefield? I thought. It’d make sense, given how it seemed to be bouncing off anything that hit her.

As Slaughterhouse realised that her grapple wasn’t doing anything, Glory then grabbed her neck in return. Then, she suddenly slammed into the ground, taking Slaughterhouse with her.

Dust kicked up where the two hit the ground, but we could hear the aftermath as it settled: Glory was punching the living daylights out of Slaughterhouse.

It almost sounded like violent CPR, a strange rhythm to the beatdown she was giving her. We could hear every thump, every crack of bone, every spray of blood.

Until it suddenly stopped.

There was a pause. A silence hung in the air until-

“Let- let go!”

That was Glory. It wasn’t full of the bravado we’d been hearing either.

She sounded worried, even scared.

Then, Glory launched off of the ground, shooting into the sky. We watched the golden trail follow her as she flew, Slaughterhouse still attached.

“Does it look like she’s flying…weird to you?” Elena asked me.

I looked up.

Glory was flying in a strange, erratic pattern. A straight line up, then down to the side, then up again, then in a more jagged circle.

A scream, loud and agonised, echoed from the sky.

My stomach dropped.

That was Glory.

As if to prove me right, she suddenly dropped from the sky. Within seconds, she came crashing to a halt a ways down the street from where she’d taken off.

She was screaming, howling in agony. It was blood-curdling, like someone whose entire body was on fire.

I looked over, and saw her writhing on the ground, clearly in immense amounts of pain, her face almost looking contorted, her eyes wide open and bloodshot.

Slaughterhouse kneeled on top of her, one hand grasping Glory’s right hand, the other wrapped tight around her neck. That golden glow was gone, leaving Glory looking almost exposed.

I could hear Slaughterhouse laugh, deep and guttural.

“Well, where’d all that bravado go?!” She howled. “You were talking all that good shit a few minutes ago!”

Glory’s screams intensified, and she sounded almost like she was gasping for air. It sounded like she was dying.

I heard Elena back away in fear.

I was frozen, transfixed. I couldn’t look away, no matter how much I wanted to.

Then, I felt a small voice whisper in my mind.

Do something. 

I could not tell you why I did what I did next.

Despite my stomach feeling like it was about to drop out of my ass, I stood up.

Despite my mind screaming at me to stay where I was, I ran towards Slaughterhouse and Glory.

I heard Elena scream my name, but I didn’t turn to look at her.

No one else is going to do it, it might as well be you.

My heart felt like it was about to explode in my chest as I ran.

Despite every survival instinct screaming at me to run away, my power infused into the bones in my left arm.

Power surged through me, infusing into my skin bones like nothing I’d ever felt before. I had no idea what it was doing. No idea what I was doing.

I felt the tattered remains of my arm swell and grow, the jagged and broken bones that were left expanding and growing beneath my skin, becoming larger, heavier, and denser. Pressure built in my arm as bone pushed its way out, shaping into the full length of the arm, the hands and the fingers. The newly-regrown fingers stretched and tightened, the knuckles jutting into jagged spikes.

But the bones kept growing, widening and expanding until they made up the shape of what had been the flesh of my arm, now bone-white.

The whole arm had bulked out, looking like a grotesque gauntlet, white and speckled with red.

But it didn’t matter.

All I could think was, Get her off of her. That’s all you have to do!

“Sing for me, Glory!” Slaughterhouse shouted. “SING!”

Slaughterhouse must have heard me running, because she stopped.

Her head snapped to look at me.

I can’t imagine what she saw. A tall, thin girl wearing a shitty costume made of patched up and painted motorcycle gear, a red scarf flapping behind her, face hidden by a painted helmet. 

That same girl running up to her with one bulked up and jagged bone-covered arm, cocked back like the hammer of a gun.

I swung with all the strength I could muster.

And punched Slaughterhouse in the face.

I don’t know how hard I hit her, but I could feel her jaw crack. It was enough to send her sailing through the air, hard enough to make her roll a good ten feet down the road before collapsing in a heap.

As she came to a stop, I stood there, panting. 

I looked down at Glory, who had stopped screaming. She was panting, dazed and drained. 

She looked up at me, and my eyes met. I don’t know why, but I was almost expecting her to look thankful.

But she didn’t. She looked relieved, but there was something else.

Disdain.

Almost like she was mad that I’d saved her.

I stared down at Glory.

Why did I do that? The rational part of my brain suddenly came to life in my head.

I turned to look at Slaughterhouse, who still lay crumpled in a heap down the road.

Do I have a death wish?

I blinked, realising Glory was still just…staring up at me, while Slaughterhouse slowly stirred at the other end of the street.

“A-are you ok?” I asked, looking down at Glory. A stupid question, clearly she wasn’t.

Her face twisted, the lingering pain she’d been experiencing fading away and being replaced with something hotter, angrier. 

“Are you nuts?!” She screamed, glaring at me. Her voice was ragged and hoarse.

“Y-you didn’t- she was- I-” I stammered, still trying to process what exactly I’d done.

She shot up to her feet. “What, you get rejected and think you can fuck with that crazy bitch?!”

Regardless, what she said stung, like getting punched in the stomach. Any words I had felt like they’d died in my mouth.

We heard Slaughterhouse pull herself up, shaking herself like a dog trying to dry itself off. Glory and I turned to look at her. Her face was exposed; turns out I’d knocked her helmet clean off, which had skipped further down the road.

She looked up, glaring straight at us. Her long, dark, matted hair covered her face, but even so I could see she looked rough; her misshapen face was covered in a network of scars and bumps, like someone whose face had been broken over and over but never quite healed right.

But her eyes, a deep red, had locked onto us. A deep, horrifying grin spread across her face, revealing a mouth of razor-sharp teeth like some kind of predator.

Glory looked apprehensive. But even so, she stepped forward, in front of me.

“Ready for round two, asshole?” She shouted across the street, bracing herself for another fight. But her voice sounded shaky, a small but noticeable pang of fear.

“I’ve called in backup. There’ll be more heroes in a few minutes, but I need to hold her off. You two need to go, now!” She said, her voice low.

I felt Elena come up from behind me, grabbing me. “Skye, let's go!”

I looked at Elena. She looked terrified, desperate to get as far away from here as possible. 

But my eyes kept looking past her, towards the sea of carnage that Slaughterhouse had made. Dozens of people laying dead or dying, blood and viscera caking the roads, the walls, the sidewalks, and each other.

I turned back to look at Glory. She was looking at me like I was brain-dead.

Seeing all this carnage, all this death, it flashed a memory in my head.

Of mom.

Of how I felt on that night seven years back.

I took a breath, standing upright. “N-no.”

Elena looked up at me, her mouth agape.

“What-”

“I c-can’t-” I stammered. I knew how insane this sounded, I could feel every instinct in my brain telling me to go with Elena, to run as fast as I can and never look back.

“If you stay she’s going to kill you!”

“I can’t just leave people to die!” I yelled. “W-what kind of hero would I be if I just walked away?!”

Elena stopped, dumbfounded.

“I-if you want to run, then g-go. I won’t blame you.” I said, my voice firm for what felt like the first time in years. “But I can’t, not now.”

Elena just stared up at me, emotions clearly running wild on her face. She looked horrified, confused, even a little bit angry.

She let out a frustrated yell, before bolting away, clambering on top of an empty truck. She looked terrified; hard not to be, even I felt like I was one bad move away from shitting myself.

“You’re serious?” Glory said, turning to me, equally baffled as Slaughterhouse began stepping towards us.

“A-as s-serious as I’ll ever be…” I muttered back, wincing. 

She sighed. “Fine, whatever. Just try not to get in my way. Or die.”

The two of us stood side by side. Despite Glory’s bravado, there was a shakiness to her voice; whatever Slaughterhouse had done to her before had clearly rattled her more than she was letting on.

I turned to Elena. She was frantically picking out packets of food from inside her costume, cramming them into her mouth.

As for me?
I was standing pretty much completely still. It was taking every fiber of self-restraint I had to not collapse.

I glanced down at this strange, all-bone gauntlet that had taken the place of what had been my mangled left arm.

Before, I was making blades, claws, and maces. Simple things.

But this?

It was intricate, like armour. The bones in my arm had expanded and separated, ripped through the skin and formed a kind of armour around the muscle.

I had no idea how I even did it. Could I do it again?

I didn’t get a chance to think about that much more, as I suddenly heard Slaughterhouse yell as she bounded towards us, almost like a wild animal.

Glory took off like a rocket from my right, flying fast to meet Slaughterhouse. Just like before, Glory flew over Slaughterhouse who ducked under her strike, barely breaking stride as she bolted towards us.

I held up my right arm - the normal one - and tried to morph the bones into a shield, something to protect me.

Unlike last time, my arm didn’t rip itself to shreds as the bones unfolded. Instead, the bones simply shot out from under my skin before quickly reforming into a bone-white buckler.

Just in time to catch Slaughterhouse’s strike.

She slammed her fist into the shield, and I felt the impact shoot through my body.

She was strong, way stronger than I expected; it was like being hit by a truck, and I could feel my arm breaking at the shoulder before the bones knitted back together.

I let out a scream, pushing back with the shield-arm before I reared back, swinging my left arm to punch her again.

She caught it with her free hand.

She looked at me, grinning.

Her eyes flashed a jet black as dark sparks raced across her hands before-

Something splattered across her face, thick and red, like jelly.

It was jelly.

I stepped back, running from Slaughterhouse, turning to look back at Elena. 

I gave her a thumbs up before turning back to Slaughterhouse, who was clawing the jelly off her face. Almost as soon as she had, Glory slammed into her, spin-kicking her down the street where she slammed into a moving car, bouncing down the road.

“She’s tough as shit!” Glory said, clearly worn out.

I didn’t look at her, my focus was locked on to Slaughterhouse.

“Think she’s got a mix of powers, like all the ones of the old Slaughterhouses, then whatever she has.” She explained.

“So that’s-”

“At least twelve different powers, yeah.” Glory said, grimacing.

It explained a lot. Most supers had one or two primary powers, and a very small percentage - about point-five percent, last I’d heard - had three. No wonder she was as lethal as she was with that many powers in her system.

I watched as Slaughterhouse picked herself up from where she’d landed, throwing aside the car she’d been launched into.

“A-any we need to watch out for?”

“Clearly super-strength, that weird fleshy tendril-thing. Diving down into the ground.” 

Glory winced a little bit, shaking.

“Don’t let her touch you.” She continued. “She gets on your skin, it hurts. Worst pain I’ve ever felt. I don’t know how she even touched me.”

I nodded, slowly. I realised that playing solely defense might not be a good idea anymore. I focused on my left arm, reshaping the white gauntlet it had become into something sharper. Immediately, it warped, changing into a long, slender, razor-sharp blade.

Just in time for Slaughterhouse to come barrelling towards us again.

Both of her arms had unraveled, a mad tangle of red tendrils now spiralling around her.

She was cackling, swinging both arms down towards Glory and I. So we swung back.

I swung my left arm in a wide arc, catching and slicing through the tendrils as they bared down on us. Chunks of red meat plopped around me, and I just kept swinging again and again.

Next to me, Glory was grabbing handfuls of the tendrils, ripping them away from her while others bounced off of that golden shield that covered her body.

I could see chunks of starch and meat shooting past me, clearly trying to knock whatever tendrils we couldn’t cut away from us. It was relentless, this storm of whirling red meat around us, and all I could do was just swing away and cut them down.

Then, it stopped, before they suddenly began retracting fast. I tried to duck down, but felt a few wrap around my chest and arms.

Shit!

Immediately, I was ripped off of the ground, flying right towards Slaughterhouse. I started panicking, flailing in mid-air and trying to cut it away. I glanced up to see Slaughterhouse, a mad grin full of razor-sharp teeth bearing down on me, a clenched fist reared back to strike.

SHIT!

I held up both arms in front of my face to-

CRACK!

Too late.

My vision went white as Slaughterhouse’s fist hammered into the side of the head, a ringing sound beaming around my skull. I felt my helmet bend inwards, the metal denting and pounding my head while the visor cracked on the left side.

I dropped, tumbling to the ground in a heap and landing flat on my back. Twice in one night I’d been knocked down like this, but this felt so much worse. My vision blurred and swam, my legs felt weak and numb. I could feel bile rising up in my throat. 

I had to get away, I had to-

Slaughterhouse grabbed onto my right leg, hard. Pure, ice-cold dread shot through my chest in the instant before she yanked me up by the leg; pain shot up my hip and back as I was whipped around like a flail, my arms uselessly trailing behind me. I didn’t have time to process what was happening before the world blurred into a smear. A flash of pain shot through my back and chest, an impact in my torso echoed with a sickening crack as I was slammed into a flying Glory.

She cursed as she was sent flying back, and I heard Elena scream my name from where she was perched.

The world spun again. Slaughterhouse wasn’t done with me. She twisted her grip rapidly, with enough force that I felt my right leg snap like a dry twig.

I screamed, crying out in pain.

It didn’t matter. Slaughterhouse reared back, before slamming me into the concrete like I was a wound-up towel. I hit the ground with a crunch, hard enough to crack the ground. I felt my ribs crack in my chest.

I screamed again.

Then she yanked me up.

And slammed me down again.

The ground cratered. Pain shot up my spine like fireworks. I tried to scream again, and all that came out was a wet gurgling gasp.

Up. Then down again.

My right arm bent the wrong way as it cracked against the ground again. Something popped in my back. Blood pooled in my mouth. I felt some of my teeth shake loose.

Up. Then down again.

The visor of my helmet cracked open, splintering off as I was driven deeper into the pavement like a nail.

Up. Then down again.

My lower jaw cracked loose. Asphalt and concrete embedded into my face. Shards of my visor sliced my cheeks.

I couldn’t see. I could barely think.

She finally let go of me, dumping me there like a broken toy. I could hear her gravelly laughter as she stepped away from me, slowly.

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Taking even a small breath felt like my chest was being crushed in a vice. I could taste blood in my mouth, could feel teeth that were knocked free.

I heard Elena scream again in the distance, while Glory cursed. Glory had clearly started assaulting Slaughterhouse again, because I could feel the impact of Glory duking it out with her, each punch sounding like a bomb going off.

I coughed weakly, blood and loose teeth spilling from my mouth. I realised, in faint and slightly-delirious horror, that I couldn’t feel my legs. As much as that would have scared me, what I was feeling was even worse.

Glory was screaming, a battle cry as she punched Slaughterhouse, each punch reverberating through the ground, vibrating through me as I laid there.

It stopped.

Then, a whooshing sound. I heard something crash into a building; or more accurately, someone. Glory.

Slaughterhouse chuckled.

“Two down.” She snarled, turning away from me. “Let’s see what sounds you make when you break!”

As I lay there, lying in my own blood and broken bones, something twitched inside me. 

Deep inside my mangled body, a low heat felt like it was rising from the pit of my bones.

My body was moving on its own.

I felt my body writhe, like something crawling beneath my skin, fibres of muscle pulling tight. Ligaments knitting together with a slow meaty tug, causing my body to jerk again. I hissed in pain through the blood left in my mouth as pain set in; I wanted to scream, wanted it to stop. My shattered ribs groaned as they pulled themselves together in my chest, scraping against each other like stone against stone as they were forced together.

My back clicked and popped back into place. Immediately I became acutely aware of the pain in my right leg, snapped in two.

Then it twitched once. Then again.

Then it jerked back, like it was trying to push itself back together.

Unsuccessfully.

Stabbing pain shot through my hip, and I screamed through gritted teeth - what was left of them. The leg twisted again, causing me to scream again, but the joint still hung loose like it wasn’t sure how to fit itself.

My jaw clicked once. Then again. Then there was a low, wet pop as it set itself. Mostly, anyway.

I wheezed. It was pathetic, weak, and gurgling, but it was quite literally all I could muster.

My body was trying to fix itself but everything just hurt. Even then, it wasn’t enough. I knew I could heal quicker than a normal person, but that had only been cuts and scrapes, or when my bones tore through my skin. In the state I was in, it was like trying to put a broken jigsaw together, piece by agonising piece.

As I laid there, agonised as my body pulled itself together, thoughts crawled through my head.

I should have stayed home.

How did I let Elena talk me into this?

Why did I stay and fight her?

But I knew why.

I couldn’t just sit and run away while people. Not while I had the power to do something.

I could hear Elena spitting, yelling my name, terrified.

My head swam. Staying conscious was getting harder by the second, I could feel the world spinning. It felt so easy to just drift off.

Until I heard Elena scream.

Elena Vargas was about to die.

That was the only reality that made sense to her right now.

She was standing, hunched down and perched on the top of an abandoned truck in the middle of this broken and bloodstained street, watching in horror as Slaughterhouse - this nightmarish murder-machine of a supervillain - slammed Skye into the ground like an angry child with a toy.

The first impact was bad enough. But then Slaughterhouse kept going, slamming Skye again and again until she just tossed her aside.

Elena stared in horror, hands covering her mouth as Skye just lay there. Broken, bloodied, and unmoving.

Glory had flown at Slaughterhouse next, arms and legs glowing like miniature suns and striking with the force of a cannon. Slaughterhouse, for her part, barely reacted and just tossed Glory through a nearby building.

But now there was nobody else standing.

Except for Elena.

And Elena was suddenly very, very conscious of how normal she was physically. She wasn’t like Glory with her glowing golden forcefield (for all the good that was doing her). Nor was she like Skye with her regeneration (which clearly wasn’t doing her any good either).

Physically, Elena was a normal 17-year old. Not especially athletic - a decent run would wear out her pretty quickly - and with no enhanced durability.

Just the power to chew things up and spit them out.

And now Slaughterhouse - someone who not even five minutes ago she had seen rip people in half like it was an accident - was closing in on her.

What the fuck had happened in her life to bring it to this?

Oh right, she thought, dryly, This vigilante shit was my idea. 

“Two down.” Slaughterhouse snarled her head slowly turning to look at Elena. “Let’s see what sounds you make when you break, Spitter!”

Elena’s breath caught. “Skye?! SK-SKYE?!”

No response. Skye just laid there, unmoving.

Panicking, Elena cycled through whatever was in her stomach, trying to think of a mixture that could buy her some time. That was a weird quirk of her power that she hadn’t really put too much thought into, being able to know what was sitting in her stomach at all times.

She needed something solid, something that could buy her time.

Whatever meat was left? Clearly wasn’t doing much already.

Sugar? Maybe, if she condensed it enough.

Shaking, she reared her head back, the sugar in her stomach quickly compressing before rocketing up to her expanding throat.

Then, she spat. Not one large lump of foodstuff like she normally did, but a bunch of small pellets of condensed sugar. They launched out of her mouth like a shotgun, shooting towards the approaching Slaughterhouse.

They slammed into her chest and head. She didn’t even break her stride.

Elena’s stomach dropped. She felt like she was about to vomit.

She screamed and spun on her heel, trying to run as far away as she could from Slaughterhouse. But as she jumped from the top of the truck, her ankle rolled and she landed on her side with enough force to knock the wind out of her.

As she turned to look behind her, the truck flipped over as Slaughterhouse lifted it away with one hand.

“N-No!” Elena yelled, scrambling, tears stinging her eyes. “Stay away, get the fuck away from me!!”

Slaughterhouse just chuckled, her right hand unravelling into those red tendrils. They snaked towards Elena, slowly, almost playfully.

Elena tried to get up to run, but in her panic her feet kept slipping.

Then she felt a tendril wrap tight around one leg. Then the other.

She screamed, trying desperately to grab at the ground for some kind of safety as she was dragged across the road, her nails grinding against the asphalt.

Another tendril wrapped around her waist, then one around her neck, as she was hoisted into the air, helpless and restrained by Slaughterhouse.

“The other two made such sounds when they screamed,” Slaughterhouse said, almost wistful as she pulled Elena closer towards her. “I wonder what song you’ll sing?”

Elena struggled frantically, writhing and flailing. But for all that struggling, it felt like the tendrils were just pulling themselves tighter.

She gasped for air, before she screamed desperately.

“Somebody, please!” She yelled, her voice sounding croaky as a tendril tightened around it.

Slaughterhouse raised her left hand, jet black sparks dancing across it as she laughed.

Elena started hyperventilating, as best as she could as her throat was pulled tighter and tighter by the tendril wrapped around her neck. She clenched her eyes shut, as if not seeing it would make it go away. 

She screamed.

Then, there was a sound. A wet, meaty sound. She felt something splash across her face. 

The tendrils around her body loosened ever so slightly.

She gingerly opened one eye, looking at Slaughterhouse. Slaughterhouse looked…shocked, her head slowly turning to look down at her chest.

Elena’s eyes followed hers.

There, jutting out from the centre of Slaughterhouse’s chest, were three long and thin bone-white points, like needles.

Wait, Elena thought, Bone?

She glanced up, past Slaughterhouse’s shoulder.

There, in the middle of the road, crouched on one knee with her left arm outstretched - the one that had become this strange white gauntlet of bone - was Skye. She looked awful, her helmet dented and the visor broken in half, the one visible eye almost swollen shut with blood caking her face and a good chunk of her body. She looked like she could barely even stay upright. 

But jutting from her left arm were three long bone-white points like spears, each one shot straight through Slaughterhouse’s chest.

Then, Skye’s voice broke out. She sounded ragged and hoarse, like just speaking was agonising. But it cut through the nighttime air like a knife.

“Hands. Off. My. Friend!”

One minute I’d been lying in a pool of my own blood, barely conscious, trying desperately to breathe as my body slowly, pathetically pulled itself back together.

Then I heard something. 

I’d heard Elena scream, and it was like a shot of adrenaline straight to the chest. My body’s healing - which at this point was slowly and pathetically trying to pull my body back together enough to keep me alive - kicked into overdrive; my ribs snapped back together, my right arm popped back into place with a crack that made me want to vomit. I gasped as my body seized up, then relaxed.

I still wasn’t good, far from it. Breathing hurt like hell, and my right leg still screamed with even a slight movement. But I was better; I could move, I could see a bit more, I could-

I saw Slaughterhouse, standing over Elena.

No…

I pushed myself up with my left arm before it almost immediately buckled, sending me sprawling back to the floor.

Slaughterhouse wrapped those awful red tendrils around her, lifting her up into the air.

No!

I forced myself up again, this time on my good leg. I was so sore, every nerve screamed, but it didn’t matter.

Elena screamed, dangling helplessly.

NO!

I thrust out my left hand like I was trying to reach out for her and-

My power surged, filling the white bony mass that had become my left arm. Immediately three narrow spears of bone erupted from it, shooting through the air like bullets. I felt each one hit Slaughterhouse in the back with a wet, meaty jolt.

It went silent.

I was panting, feeling unsteady. I looked up, and saw Elena’s eyes meet mine. She was safe.

Thank God.

Then I saw Slaughterhouse’s head turn to look at me.

She looked surprised.

Good.

I opened my mouth to speak. It hurt, like someone was dragging razor wire up and down my throat.

“Hands. Off. My. Friend!” I snarled, ragged and hoarse.

I saw Elena wriggle free, tumbling to the ground and immediately bolting away and running towards me.

Wait…

My eyes widened. Realisation hit me like a slap in the face.

My bones had impaled Slaughterhouse.

All this time, anything the three of us had done - the punches, the kicks, the wads of foodstuff - they’d hit Slaughterhouse and done nothing.

Hell, even when I’d punched her before it still felt like I was punching a wall.

But here I was, Slaughterhouse impaled on the end of my bones like a piece of meat.

Was that the key? Piercing her, cutting into her body?

I tensed my left arm, causing my power to tense with it. The spears of bone quickly retracted from Slaughterhouse’s back with a pop, melding back into me.

Elena ran to me, skidding to my side.

“Skye! How’re you-”

I didn’t turn to look at Elena. I was too focused on Slaughterhouse. She stumbled forward, unsteady. For the first time this whole fight, she looked uneasy.

“Skye, hello?!” Elena hissed, grabbing my helmet and turning my head to look at her. A sharp pain shot through my neck, before I met Elena’s eyes.

“Jesus Christ...!” She gasped, looking at me. I must have looked awful, because she turned pale at the sight of me, even with the helmet masking most of my face.

“I-I… I know how-” I started, before doubling over coughing. Pain flared in my ribs. Elena got under my arm, helping me up without a word; I leaned on her, using her as a crutch.

“I know how to beat her.” I wheezed.

Elena spun to look at me, looking at me like I’d grown a second head.

“You can not be serious, look at yourself!” She shouted. “You can barely stand, she swung you around like a toy!”

Whatever response I had was cut off by a golden streak rocketing out of a nearby building, as Glory shot out and drop-kicked Slaughterhouse in the jaw, sending her sprawling across the ground. Then, she grabbed her by the leg before throwing her up, into a different building.

“I am so fucking SICK of this!” She screamed.

Then she turned to look at us, glowing and pissed off, floating about a foot off of the ground. Somehow, even after all this chaos, she looked like she’d walked right off a billboard: not a scratch on her, even her hair was somehow perfect.

“Not gonna say it again. You two. Leave. Now!” She yelled.

My jaw clenched. What made her think she could just bark orders at us? Just because she was this glowing golden supergirl?

“I th-think I-” I croaked, breath hitching. “I think I know how we can b-beat her.”

There was a pause, as if the city itself heard what I said and was processing how delusional I sounded. Glory’s jaw just dropped open as she listened to me. 

“Jesus fuck, you’re actually insane!” She said, laughing humourlessly. “You look like you can’t stand and you think you can kill her?!”

I tried to stand up more, meeting her gaze. White-hot pain shot through my right leg as I did, but I fought through it, standing as tall as I could.

“Skye, are you hearing yourself?” Elena asked from beside me. “You nearly died, you need a doctor!”

I ignored her, and locked eyes with Glory. A small part of my brain noted that she was a good few inches shorter than me.

“L-listen to me. I know we c-can beat her. Sh-she’s t-tough but-.”

“‘She’s tough!’ Yeah no shit, Sherlock!” Glory retorted, with a mocking snort. “I’ve been beating her ass and she’s still standing!”

“Y-you’re not the one she threw around like a f-fucking ragdoll!” I shouted back, anger rising in my chest. Where had this come from, had I really been hit that hard in the head?

I hear Elena gasp under me, half-holding me up and half-trying to pull me back.

“Excuse you?!” Glory snapped, her brows raising. “Just because you got your ribs turned to gravel doesn’t mean you can shit-talk me!”

“Come on, she saved you from whatever Slaughterhouse was doing to you before!” Elena shouted from under me. “Least you could do is not be a super-bitch!”

Glory let out an incoherent growl, and she was suddenly right in front of us, visibly mad.

“What in the fuck makes you think you have any chance of taking her out in the state you’re in right now?” she snarled, practically spitting out each word.

“Because I got her!” I shouted. “Speared her through the b-back! All the way through!”

That made her blink. Her stance shifted. Her golden glow dimmed, just a bit.

“You got her? Really?” She didn’t believe me.

“She did.” Elena said. “Saved my ass.”

I held up my left arm, the spears of bone still jutting from it.

“She didn’t shake it off like she did with everything else,” I continued, trying to keep my voice steady, “If we can keep cutting into her, we can slow her down. If she c-can heal, I don’t think she can heal very fast.”

“Really?” Elena said from under me, equally incredulous. “Why?”

“B-because if she could,” I said, looking up at where Glory had launched Slaughterhouse. “sh-she’d have shot b-back down by now.”

I could feel Elena staring up at me, trying to decide if I was nuts, correct, or both.

“This is nuts, dude.” She whispered, sounding like she was on the verge of tears. “You realise that, right? You’re barely holding it together.”

“I-I can heal better than I thought.” I murmured.

“Not what I meant, and you know it.” Elena responded.

“Sorry. B-but if we don’t try, Slaughterhouse gets to run free til this supposed backup appears.”

Glory still hadn’t responded. She had been staring up at the hole in the building, before she ran a hand through her perfect hair and let out a frustrated sigh.

Of course she looks camera-ready. I thought. Even after being flung through a building she still looks like a fucking model.

“Fine.” She barked. “If you really, really think this will work, go for it. I’m not gonna stop you. But if you think for even a second that it won’t, you both run as fast as you fucking can, and you don’t come back. Got it?”

I nodded, before looking down at Elena.

“G-get out of here.” I said to her, my voice cracking.

She paused. I could see her looking around for an easy exit. I realised I could hear sirens in the distance.

“…No.” She said, looking back at me. “Not gonna ditch you and leave you to die. But I’m going back to somewhere she can’t get me again.”

I just nodded. She gave my shoulder a last squeeze before she scrambled up a nearby fire escape.

My eyes closed, as I focused my power into my left arm, melding it into a slightly curved blade, like a massive hunting knife.

I tried to stand myself to my full height, putting weight down on my right leg. The bone had just barely corrected itself, and I could still feel the flesh knitting back together. It still hurt, but I could handle it.

I turned to look at Glory. Here we were again, standing side-by-side for the second time tonight.

“You’re fucked in the head, you know that?” She muttered without looking at me.

I didn’t respond. Not because I couldn’t, but because with how semi-delirious I felt, I don’t think I’d have said anything particularly nice. 

I glanced over to her; Glory was standing there, literally glowing. Still gorgeous, throwing out snark and quips like it was just another mission, like this was somehow normal, like she - and especially I - hadn’t been beaten half to death and back. She’d probably finish off tonight with an interview with the press, and she’d get all the glory.

Meanwhile, I looked like I’d been scraped off of the pavement with a shovel and left out to dry.

But also, I did sound insane. Here I was; broken, battered, and talking like I could seriously go toe-to-toe with one of the world’s most violent supervillains. Maybe it was the full-body beating I’d just taken, but the anxiety that normally took over everything I did was just…gone, at least for now.

Up above us, Slaughterhouse roared, an unholy howl filling the air. Then her head turned to look down at us, eyes glowing red.

She dropped, falling like a stone.

“Eyes up, Bonebrain.” Glory said, bracing herself.

I rolled my neck, feeling something pop.

“I-It’s Skullgirl” I murmured.

“Whatever.” Glory retorted. I could almost hear her eyes roll in her head.

I raised my left arm-blade, the edge of it glinting under the streetlights. 

My knees were shaking. My chest burned.

I couldn’t run now. If I was going to die here, I was going out swinging.

Glory shot forward, and I followed behind her. My leg screamed as I ran, but I ignored it, running as fast as I could.

Slaughterhouse snarled, grabbing an abandoned car with one hand and launching it at us. Glory flew in front of me, swatting it down so it landed to the side in a heap with a crash

I focused on Slaughterhouse. I could see in the centre of her chest where my bones had stabbed her before, the holes still there. But there was something inside the hole, plugging it shut, something red and sinewy.

I threw out my right hand, surging my power through it. Immediately, spears of bone - thinner than the ones I’d sent from my left arm - shot out from my fingertips towards her. She darted to the side, the spears just barely missing her, before she bolted towards me.

Glory flew in front of her, blocking her approach. Seizing my chance, I ran around her and swung my arm-blade at Slaughterhouse. I saw her eye catch me, but too late.

The blade hooked right into the back of Slaughterhouse’s thigh. She let out a muffled howl of pain as I cut through her skin.

What struck me was how strange it felt, it didn’t feel as neat as I imagined cutting through flesh would feel like. Instead the blade snagged, sawing through what felt like hundreds of tightly-pulled strings buried beneath her skin.

As the blade exited with a wet snap, I saw Slaughterhouse stumble back. Whatever sense of victory I had was immediately cut short as more of those tendrils - smaller than the ones I’d been used to so far - shot out from the cut I’d made in her leg, wrapping around my right arm.

Oh, so its muscle fibers! I realised, immediately before they violently retracted, yanking me towards Slaughterhouse’s leg.

I landed with a thud at her feet as she raised her leg to stomp my head in. Mercifully, I was quick enough to push myself away as her foot came down with a crunch, cracking the ground.

Slaughterhouse loomed over me, ready to strike again, before something slammed into her head, something that sizzled her skin.

It was a lump of meat, but thick green acid sprayed over her face, sizzling instantly. Her skin hissed and bubbled like oil on a skillet, smoke rising as it ate into her scarred flesh. I heard Slaughterhouse scream, muffled by the meat covering her mouth.

Nice shot, Elena. I thought, pulling myself back up. Seizing the moment, Glory flew in and punched Slaughterhouse in the chest, causing her to groan as air left her lungs. Then, I rushed in, quickly focusing power into my right hand again, launching more of those spear-like lengths of bone. Two of them shot from my fingertips, catching Slaughterhouse right between the ribs.

This time there was resistance, like something inside her was holding me at bay. I gritted my teeth, focusing. The spikes inched forward, grinding against those tightly-pressed muscle fibres, which felt almost like an undersuit of rock-hard armour.  Then, with a sickening series of snaps and pops, they broke through. I felt her muscles rupture, something wet tear open.

Slaughterhouse screamed as I broke through. Glory, seizing an opportunity, rocketed forward. She punched Slaughterhouse in the chest again, her fist flashing like a bomb going off. Then again, and again, and again, the punches sounding like a cannon. With each punch, Slaughterhouse was knocked further and further back until she was pinned to the wall of the building. 

Glory didn’t let up, each punch cracking the wall behind Slaughterhouse further and further, embedding her into the bricks.

Then, Slaughterhouse’s head snapped back. She let out a cry, a roar of pain and anger. Her back split open, unfolding and erupting like a blooming flower.

Hundreds, maybe thousands of those red muscle fibers unfolded from her back, whirling and flailing like a fleshy tornado. The thing that struck me most was the smell; like a butcher’s but weirdly warm,  the scent hitting me like a truck.

Her tendrils spread out wildly behind and above her, most of them affixing themselves to the tall building Glory had kicked Slaughterhouse into before.

Unfortunately, a good amount of them wrapped around me. They latched onto my waist, around my chest, and I suddenly found myself lifted off of the ground. The tendrils affixed to the building retracted, quickly lifting Slaughterhouse off of the ground towards it, dragging me behind her as I yelped.

She was moving fast, each muscle fiber working in perfect concert with the other, causing us to scramble up this building’s wall.

“You think you’re clever, child?!” Slaughterhouse snarled. I turned up to look at her; whatever acid Elena had spat at her had burned through the skin on her face, as flesh peeled off of it, chunks falling down to the streets below us.

I flailed, desperately trying to make my power do something, anything. I was too agitated, thinking too much, I couldn’t get a good grasp of anything; my bones just writhed inside my skin.

“You think you’re the only one who thought they figured me out?! You think just cutting me up is going to kill me?!”

My body jolted as she moved, taking us further and further up the building, her tendrils moving like the legs of a frantic meaty spider. We got about two stories up, but she kept going.

“I’ve killed more superhumans than you can comprehend, girl!” she snarled, face twisting into something monstrous. “You stuttering little upstart, you think you get to kill me?!”

Slaughterhouse stopped, now four stories up, her tendrils hooked into the sides of the building. I looked down, feeling my vision spin as I realised just how high up we were.

The tendrils around my arms tightened and stretched, pulling my arms wide apart, holding me like I was on display. I pulled desperately, trying to break them off, but it was like trying to rip apart steel.

Suddenly, I lurched; they retracted, pulling me towards her. She reached out, clamping her hand right around my bare neck.

“Sing for me!” Slaughterhouse commanded, her hand dancing with black sparks.

Immediately I felt something, like a match being struck beneath my skin.

Then, there was pain. I thought I knew pain, getting half of my body broken and mashed to a pulp; I was still feeling that pain run through my system. But this was different; not a sharp pain, not a dull one, not a sting or an ache. It was every kind of pain imaginable, cranked up to eleven and pumped into every inch of my body.

It made me beg for the pain of mere broken limbs and shattered ribs.

It felt like every single nerve in my body had been lit on fire. My muscles seized violently, hard enough that they could have snapped my bones clean in two again.

My jaw clenched; I tried to scream, but all that came out was a ragged cry. My body arched and reared like it was trying everything to get away. 

Even thinking was hard. I wanted nothing more than to get away, to get her off of me, but my body felt like it had just shut down. My legs dangled uselessly beneath me. My arms spasmed and twitched, muscles trembling and contracting. Every breath was shallow and broken. My vision blurred. My ears rang.

I could feel Slaughterhouse lean in, I could practically hear the smile on her face.

“Now that,” She whispered, chuckling, “That is a beautiful song.”

I tried to fight through it, tried to power through the pain, but I just couldn’t. It took everything I could just to try and open my mouth, and all that came out was a ragged, gurgling scream.

I could see her leaning her mouth towards me, mouth open. Rows and rows of sharp, jagged teeth like a shark, like she was ready to eat me alive.

CRACK!

Slaughterhouse’s grip on my neck loosened. Almost immediately, the overwhelming pain started to fade like water flowing out of my body. I gasped, inhaling as I opened my eyes.

Something had slammed into Slaughterhouse’s right arm, hard enough to cause the elbow to bend inward. She snarled, looking more angry than actually hurt. My eyes flicked up, and I saw what looked like a gumball, easily the size of my head, whizzing into the building we were hanging from with a crack.

But the pain was gone, and that was all I needed. 

The tendrils around my arm had relaxed ever-so-slightly, enough to let me move. I swung my left arm, still morphed into that white blade, slicing through the ones around me. The sound was like rubber bands pinging with a snap-snap-snap, each one causing Slaughterhouse and I to drop slightly from the now-great height we were at.

“Do you have a death wish?” She snarled. “You realise you’ll die if you fall from a height like this?!”

I remembered the tryouts, how I fell half the height of a building and survived without much of a scratch. Could I survive a fall from up here? Could she?

Only one way to find out. I thought.

I grabbed onto one of the tendrils with my right hand, which tensed as I latched onto it, shooting me further up into the mad tangle of muscle fibres that were grappling onto the building.

Perfect.

Another swing, my left arm-blade cutting into them neatly. Again, Slaughterhouse started to drop, but at the same time she flexed the tendrils she had left and launched herself towards me like a rocket.

I let go of the tendril I was holding on to, morphing my right hand into another blade which erupted from my flesh; not as big as my left, but it would do.

I fell, before we collided with a thud in mid-air. I drove my right arm-blade into her stomach, feeling the edge grind through tight cords of muscle. She snarled, her right hand stretched out towards me; I swung up my left arm-blade, catching it.

Black sparks danced across it. My stomach dropped as I expected more of that unimaginable pain. Then–nothing.

Slaughterhouse’s face dropped. She looked baffled.

I smirked behind my helmet, swinging my arm out. It was enough to cut through the palm of Slaughterhouse’s hand. Again I felt the muscle beneath snap, as the top of her palm and three of her fingers fell into the open air.

She howled in pain, and lost focus. The remaining tendrils that were grappled to the building broke free.

We went into free-fall.

I looked down at Slaughterhouse. She was bigger than me, stronger than me, but she was also heavier than me. She was falling faster than me.

And it looked like she’d realised that too.

I could faintly hear Elena and Glory yell, and could see Glory take off towards us.

Slaughterhouse reached out her hands, trying to extend more of her tendrils out towards the building, but they couldn’t get a grip; they either slid off or they just snapped from the force.

The ground was getting closer. Glory wasn’t going to get here in time.

I pulled my left arm back. I knew I needed to make her stop somehow, make it so she couldn’t move. So I focused everything I could into my arm.

The bone cracked and flowered open rapidly, growing larger and longer; morphing from the large blade into a massive white spike like a jackhammer, almost as long as I was tall.

There was a loud thud. Slaughterhouse hit the ground with a crunch, her body bouncing as she landed. She grunted in pain, a spray of blood rocketing out of her mouth.

Her eyes opened. I couldn’t imagine what I looked like to her. A mirror image of my first punch against her, but now I looked broken, battered, one bad move away from keeling over dead.

God, please. I prayed.

I screamed as I bared down on her, thrusting my arm forward. Slaughterhouse raised up her arm to-

I brought the full weight of my fall behind me, my arm-spike driving forward like a javelin, and slammed it into her chest.

There was a sound I’ll never forget as the tightly-wound muscle fibers in her chest broke. A crunching, ripping, sick, wet tearing sound like a tree being split down the middle. As I tore through that under-armour of muscle, I felt her ribs crunch, something else inside snapped in two.

The impact immediately shot through my body; I felt bones all across my body rattle and crack, air shooting out of me.

Hold it together. I thought, trying desperately to keep myself from passing out.

Slaughterhouse let out a long wheeze.

Pain shot through me, my vision swam. I felt lightheaded. But here I was, face to face with Slaughterhouse, my arm buried in her chest.

“‘Upstart’, r-right?” I said, trying to keep my voice as firm as I could while my lungs struggled. “Name’s ‘Skullgirl,’ bitch.”

My words hung in the air. Slaughterhouse didn’t move, didn’t breathe. For a second I thought I’d killed her. I thought–

Wait.

She was laughing.

“Hope you’re ready, ‘Skullgirl’.” She gurgled, blood oozing from her mouth.

“Tag…” she wheezed, her split lips curling into something like a smile.

Her head rolled back, eyes closing. I wasn’t far behind her; whatever willpower was keeping me upright was starting to fade

My head dropped, my vision blurring. I felt myself roll weakly off of her, landing in a heap, my spike-arm still half-buried in her chest.

I drifted off, to the sounds of approaching sirens and frantic footsteps, and someone  - Elena, maybe? - screaming my name.